The electronics policy mouths all the right things. But so have others in the past
Given the dramatic surge expected in demand for electronics products over the next decade, the Cabinet has done well to clear the ?National Policy on Electronics?. The policy which seeks to raise electronics production from around $25 billion today to $400 billion by 2020?it plans on employing around 28 million persons by 2020, after making fresh investments of $100 billion?is more than herculean. But unlike other policies, this one speaks not just of fiscal incentives, but also of preferred market access to local producers (oh oh, that?s not a great idea), of trying to increase the capacities of schools and colleges?both formal and vocational?to setting up of incubation centres, even professionally-managed but government-funded investment funds, basically the works.
But talk is cheap and while fiscal incentives are easier to deliver?tax giveaways add up to around 60% of tax collections today?they rarely help. Setting up of 200 electronic manufacturing clusters may sound a great idea in isolation, but consider the thousands of industrial estates planned over the decades with precisely the same motive of isolating industry from the generally poor levels of infrastructure across the country. Getting the government to agree to allow ?for-profit? education is critical if supply constraints are to be substantially eased, and colleges/universities can?t be hostage to the UGC-AICTE bureaucracy if the number of PhDs is to be substantially cranked up. And for all the talk of facilitating skilling, the government has come out with the parallel AICTE-driven National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF) that competes with the National Skill Development Corporation which was also tasked with skill development. Most important, the electronics policy is completely silent on labour laws that make industry wary of hiring large number of workers, let alone 28 million of them?contract workers who have been there for more than 120 days are difficult to let go and, under the law, they cannot be hired for ?core? or ?perennial? work. Forget Apple, the chances of even the next Foxconn coming out of India look quite bleak right now.
