Promoting domestic manufacturing is close to the heart of JS Sarma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). In an interview to Hindustan Times, Sarma talks about why manufacturing cannot happen in India. Excerpts: Why is there no manufacturing in India? Hist orically, our manufacturing has gone down. Manufacturing requires a lot of effort and in the last 20 years, our effort is chanelled towards designing and software. The share of manufacturing is going down in India. Our focus was on increasing tele-density.
When the telecom service sector opened up for private competition, Indian manufacturers were small. Their costs were high. Operators would get cheaper equipment from foreign manufacturers. This also discouraged indigenous manufacturing.
Manufacturing requires a holistic ecosystem. It is basically the lack of eco system that led domestic service providers to buy foreign equipment.
How do you plan to increase manufacturing?
Our effort is to build up the entire eco system for equipment manufacturing in a complete fashion.
