Covid-19 pandemic has India scrambling to boost its manufacturing sector

For decades, the services industry powered India’s growth and tempered unemployment in the world’s second-most populous nation. The coronavirus pandemic is now leading to calls for an urgent rebalancing of the economy toward manufacturing.

High-contact services jobs from airlines to hotels and malls to multiplexes were the first to collapse amid protracted lockdowns aimed at containing the virus. The decline of the sector, which typically accounts for 55% of the economy, is forcing people to seek work on rural farms or in the undersized manufacturing industry.

Ramesh Jakhar, 55, is among those hit. He used to drive a bus for