India’s self-reliance in manufacturing upsets Rahul Gandhi, tries to say ‘Make in India’ is just ‘Assemble in India’: Data and facts bust Congress MP’s propaganda and expose his lies
Congress MP, and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi comes out of his AC room very rarely these days. Whenever he comes out, he somehow always finds some or the other sad person. After this, that sad story is somehow linked to Modi government and then PM Narendra Modi is criticized.
Rahul Gandhi, the de facto head of Congress which has ruled the country for more than 6 decades, recently visited Nehru Place Market in Delhi, named after his great grandfather. It has the honour of being Asia’s largest computer and mobile market.
When Rahul Gandhi reached there, he saw Made in India mobile phones. However, this didn’t quite please him and he shared his problems on X in a post. Rahul Gandhi claimed that the manufacturing sector has been ruined after the Modi government came to power in India.
He also claimed that the phones being manufactured in India is actually not manufacturing but assembling i.e. joining the parts together. Along with this, he claimed in the video that we are far behind China. He also blamed the Modi government for the trade deficit between China and India.
Although it would have been a matter of great happiness for the leader of the opposition of the country to be concerned about things like manufacturing, but Rahul Gandhi is not really concerned, rather he is lying and trying to attack the government by presenting half-baked facts. OpIndia is bringing the truth of Rahul Gandhi’s claims in front of you.
First claim- assembling and manufacturing
Rahul Gandhi said that the smartphones being manufactured in our country are actually not ‘Make in India’ but Assemble in India. He claimed that we are just calling the work of assembling parts as Make in India. Rahul Gandhi claimed that the parts come from China and we assemble them.
The truth of this claim of Rahul Gandhi is revealed by a recent report. According to the report, more than 20% of the parts used in Apple phones and other products made in India are being made in the country itself. That is, about 20% of the parts of any iPhone made in India are manufactured locally.
The report shows that this achievement has been achieved by the vendors supplying different parts to Apple. Apple has parts suppliers all over India. These include TDK Corporation, Hon Hai Precision, Tata Electronics, Foxlink and many other companies.
According to the report, Samsung and Dixon are also using 20%-25% parts made in India. The government’s target is to take it to 35%-40% in the coming years. This will strengthen Indian industry and also reduce dependence on foreign countries for essential parts.
Rahul Gandhi should know that China, which has been engaged in this work for decades, has also reached the level of 35%-40% till now. India has achieved 20% in just 5 years. And he should understand one more thing that when the production of any product starts, its localization happens gradually.
The biggest example of this is the country’s auto industry. In the 1980s, Suzuki had started only assembling vehicles in India, but now 95% of the parts in every Suzuki vehicle made in India are Indian. The situation is the same for other industries as well.
The assembling that Rahul Gandhi is cursing today has contributed more than ₹ 2 lakh crore to the country’s exports in the financial year 2024-25. This has created lakhs of jobs. However, this is not the first time that Rahul or his gang has tried to downplay this achievement of India.
Earlier, Raghuram Rajan, close to him, has also said such thing. However, when India started making parts locally, their lips have been sealed. Rahul Gandhi should tell the entire truth to the country.
Claim 2: Increasing dependence on China
Rahul Gandhi claims in the video that our imports from China have doubled in the last 10 years and the Modi government is responsible for the growing trade deficit between the two countries. It is true that we import a large quantity of things from China and our trade deficit with China is also very large.
But Rahul Gandhi very cleverly hides one thing during this. He does not tell that India’s dependence on China actually started during the UPA era. India’s trade deficit with China increased almost 20 times during the rule of Rahul Gandhi’s party, who is blaming the Modi government for the doubling of imports.
In the year 2004, India’s imports from China were only 7.5 billion dollars (₹62 thousand crores). During the rule of Congress from 2004 to 2014, it increased 8 times and reached almost 60 billion dollars (₹5 lakh crore+). That is, during this period it increased 8 times without any check.
Rahul Gandhi should also know that during this period, the trade deficit between India and China also increased at a rate of 45% per year. According to Union Minister Piyush Goyal, between 2004 and 2014, India’s trade deficit increased from $2 billion to about $40 billion.
According to the data, India’s trade deficit with China was almost negligible in the year 2004. It crossed $40 billion (₹3.2 lakh crore+) in 2014 when the Congress was in power. Currently, the Modi government has kept it under control for the past several years.
Rahul Gandhi and his party should answer why the doors of India’s market were opened for China during his government and why its products kept coming to India without any hindrance. Why during that time the Congress didn’t emphasize on promoting manufacturing in India.
This work was also started by the Modi government and the PLI (Production Linked Incentive) scheme was introduced. Due to this, India’s manufacturing sector came back to life and foreign companies started looking at India as an option instead of China.
Claim 3 – Decreasing share of manufacturing
Rahul Gandhi claimed in his video and the post that the share of the manufacturing sector in India’s economy is continuously decreasing. He cleverly hid two facts while saying that. The first fact is that whenever a country travels from developing to developed, the share of manufacturing and agriculture sector in its economy decreases.
Second, whenever a country starts developing, it goes from agriculture to manufacturing and then to the service sector. But it is the contribution of Congress that India has become an economy that went directly from agriculture to the service sector, missing the manufacturing part in between. Economists advising Congress have constantly opposed the fact that India should increase its focus on the manufacturing sector.
The biggest example of this is Raghuram Rajan. He had advised India not to focus on the manufacturing sector like China. Economic reforms did not take place in India till 1991 during the rule of Congress. Due to this, the manufacturing sector did not flourish. After this, when economic reforms were done out of compulsion, we focused on the service sector.
The reduction in the share of the manufacturing sector in the GDP that Rahul Gandhi is talking about is not a new thing. This process had started during the Congress rule itself. The fact is that India is now showing its strength in the manufacturing sector again. However, Rahul Gandhi has a problem with this.
Sometimes he is calling it Assemble in India and sometimes a process to benefit China. Rahul Gandhi is mocking this achievement of India just for the sake of criticism, although this is nowhere close to the truth.
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