In 2025, India’s smartphone exports crossed a threshold that should change how India thinks about industrial policy. With exports of about ₹2.6 lakh crore, the smartphone became the country’s largest exported product category, ahead of diesel fuel and cut diamonds. A decade earlier, India was overwhelmingly an importer of handsets.

Recently, the Union Cabinet approved the ₹62,000-crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, and Semicon 2.0 with an outlay of ₹1.3 lakh crore. The two initiatives demonstrate the next stage of a deliberate climb, from assembly to component manufacturing, design, intellectual and property creation, resulting in globally competitive Indian firms.

The mobile-phone experience shows what disciplined policy can achieve. India’s electronics production reached ₹13 lakh crore in 2025-26, while exports touched ₹4 lakh crore. Domestic value addition has risen from about 15% to 23%. The mobile ecosystem supports roughly 12 lakh direct and indirect jobs, and women constitute nearly 70% of its direct workforce. This is more than an export success. It is industrial policy creating formal work and confidence that India can execute at global scale.

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For years, the Western world, through the Washington Consensus, advocated a free-market regime where hyperglobalisation helped them maintain dominance. The government was asked to stay away from picking industrial winners. However, that view has not survived geopolitics. The US, EU, Japan, South Korea and China now treat semiconductors, batteries, clean technology and advanced manufacturing as strategic infrastructure. Supply chains determine not only........

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