Manufacturing's Importance : The India Story

The New York Times reports on the rising profile and importance of India's manufacturing industry:

"...India has cultivated an image as a center for outsourcing, creating a new economy of call centers and software campuses that has lifted the relatively privileged. And even though workers here have for years stitched clothing and apparel, a widespread manufacturing base has been elusive, and factories have long been conspicuous for their relative absence here.
So the new murmurings of manufacturing could have a profound effect for a vast number of India's poor people, as well as for the international sourcing of goods from cars to bras.
For decades, manufacturing in India has been hobbled by antiquated labor laws, creaking infrastructure and paperwork. But for many of the three-quarters of Indians with less than a middle-school education, few factories has meant few jobs..."

The significance of these developments for Sub-Saharan Africa should not be ignored, manufacturing by and large remains the pre-eminent driver for alleviating poverty and raising per capita income.