Billaal, your posts have merit.
I serve in this sector - manufacturing. As an insider, Indians and Asians are traders not manufacturers. Manufacturing is an offshoot of trading. Governance issues make manufacturing risky while corruption enables trading. Now this is also a Global and historical fact.
Problem is that trading has been ossified, embedded and hijacked by the caste system.
Manufacturers are not a caste. It's also relatively open eco-system with lots of Global OEM's who do business on merit, not caste. Even here there is corruption and the stakes are very high, winner takes all.
Notice smaller then Global size cartels own market verticals in India, newbies are not welcome. These cartels are caste aligned and are more sales, marketing and distribution Co.'s. India always worked that way, the govt. has known it, and always went out of the way to promote agnostic manufacturing. The story of Indian govt. 's Mnufacturing invervention is never told, take it from an expert BilaAl, the govt. has been kicking and screaming industry into shape since the get go. Concrete examples are steel, then steel processing like railway stuff. Steel wheels, bogies, rails, engines. Personal equipment like entire scooter, tractor, truck, bus, and car industries. Textile, shipbuilding or IT industry. In all the above Indias Pvt.and Govt. Co's turned world beaters, including exports to tier 2-3 markets. They are pushing semicondutor, aerospace and outerspace now. Same re. China in colonial times, read Maxwells Noble House Re. Hong Kong. Modern China got pushy with manufacturing and is mostly govt. owned.
India's European and colonial connection landed it evolutionary linkages, design and capacity. Stupid to re-invent the wheel when you could build on Simpsons, Ricardo or Daimler Benz engines available locally. The merits of continuity, practicality and poverty means 'jugaad' or go with what you got and improvise. Since the foundation was British colonial, adaptation of say British engines for agro. use has been spontaneous. Classic Indian factory floors are a Mish mash of colonial, ex USSR/ex East European Commie block and assorted other lathes and other metal working machines. Bajaj Co.'s flagship Chetak scooters used to be a typical example. Many tractor companies, ordnance factories were too.
Sales, mega sales, competition and govt. policy, have forced Co.'s into R&D via buyouts, collaborations, consultants and local legacy design efforts.
India has a more then healthy, maturity, demand driven design capability today specially re. Global R&D centers mass relocation to India. Nowhere else, not Chin, not Korea but Canada and Singapore to some small extent. Many, many Indian outsourcing and Global Co's run entire University size Corp. training centers in-house which reflects the scale of operations.
At its stage of development India is far ahead in design and R&D re. it's world beating R&D outsourcing industry, but substantially behind in mapping it's Global advantage to local products. N'ést pas?
Indian products on this page show that the 100 pound gorilla is starting to waltz. Not 1 Co. all the way from the Suez Canal and beyond all the way to the Mallacas can compete with Indian Co's re. scale. Even others can't, never mind Af.-Pak., Bangladesh, Lanka et al.
