India’s economic challenge can be stated in a single number. Over the next two decades, roughly 200-250 million Indians will enter or remain within the working-age population. Yet manufacturing, the sector that historically absorbed labour at scale in every successful Asian economy, currently employs only 12-13% of India’s workforce. By comparison, manufacturing accounted for roughly 30% of employment during South Korea’s industrial rise and more than 25% during China’s peak factory expansion.
For two centuries, economic development followed a predictable formula. Workers moved from low-productivity agriculture into factories and then into higher-value services. Britain followed this path. Germany followed it. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China repeated the pattern. The details varied, but the underlying mechanism remained remarkably consistent: productivity growth required the large-scale movement of labour toward more productive economic activities.
