India may not be able to increase manufacturing output significantly with import substitution.
Opinion pieces for the day talk about manufacturing and trade, Khadim Hussain Rizvi of Pakistan, and the Union Budget.
It is said that the RCEP would have further de-industrialised India, as it already has been (apparently) by a few free trade arrangements — an assertion that many contest. Nor is the problem only China, because India has a trade deficit with virtually every country in the Asia-Pacific. The problem is a broader one, of India’s competitiveness, which has to be improved so that opening up leads to