Indian companies should focus on frugal engineering for growth: Amitabh Kant

India enterprises have the ability to undertake frugal engineering and must excel, innovate and design to drive its economic growth by 9-10 percent for the next three decades to create employment driven growth, said Amitabh Kant, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, while speaking at the Visionary Leaders for Manufacturing (VLFM) programme organised by CII.
 
Calling the apex technology and management institutes in the country to document their innovations by patenting them, Kant said that 22 percent of the patents filed from India are done by Indian companies while 78 percent were done by multinational companies operating from India.
 
Amitabh Kant informed, “Renault has designed a car for the global market from Chennai and General Motors is now trying to do the same in Talegaon. Daimler in Chennai is making trucks not for Indian markets but for global markets. What the world is realising is that India has ability to do frugal engineering.”
 
He added, “So far India had held back itself by regulatory controls, but we are now overcoming. We have so far grown on the back of services sector that contributed 60% of the GDP. Over the last 60 years, we have made India a difficult place to do business. We have simply created an economy of controls.”
 
But, jobs cannot be created in services, as much as they can be through manufacturing. Hence, according to Kant, there are huge perils of non-industrialisation for population of the size of India and it will have serious consequences, if manufacturing is not initiated.
 
Prof Shoji Shiba, chief advisor, Champions for Societal Manufacturing, said that the biggest obstacle for future transformation is mindset change. Sharing a symbolic example of an auto component company in India, Shiba said, “In past 12 years, Indian manufacturing has changed drastically. In 2015, India is ready to take challenge set by new administration. New era needs new mindset.”