The suit-and-tie crowd has a new script. It’s loud, it’s shiny, and it smells faintly of sandalwood and jet fuel. At every major industry summit from Bengaluru to Davos, the "business honchos"—that particular breed of executive who speaks exclusively in quarterly projections—are chanting a new mantra: Build in India, export to the world.

It’s a seductive pitch. They want us to believe that the global supply chain, long anchored in the smog-choked hubs of the Pearl River Delta, is finally packing its bags. The destination? A subcontinent that’s spent decades being the world’s back office and is now auditioning for the role of the world’s floor manager.

But let’s be real. We’ve seen this movie before.

The narrative follows a predictable arc. A tech titan stands on a stage, flanked by "Make in India" banners, and announces a massive new facility. They talk about "democratizing manufacturing" and "global hubs." What they don't talk about is the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme—the government’s massive pile of taxpayer cash designed to bribe companies into setting up shop. It’s not a revolution; it’s a subsidized migration.

Don't get it twisted. There’s genuine movement here. Apple is cranking out iPhones in Tamil Nadu. Micron is breaking ground on a semiconductor plant in Gujarat. The ambition isn't just to satisfy the 1.4 billion people living within India’s borders, but to ship those locally made units to London, New York, and Tokyo. It’s a pivot from "service desk of the world" to "factory of the world."

But the friction is where things get messy. Take the component problem. You can’t just flip a switch and become a manufacturing superpower. To build a high-end smartphone, you need a sprawling ecosystem of tiny, specialized parts—glass, sensors, haptics, capacitors. Currently, India has to import the vast majority of these from, you guessed it, China.

The irony is thick enough to choke on. To "build in India" for the global market, companies are forced to navigate a dizzying maze of import tariffs on the very components they need to assemble the final product. It’s like trying to build a LEGO castle while the gatekeeper taxes every individual brick you bring through the door. The government wants local value addition, but the supply chain doesn't care about nationalist pride. It cares about efficiency.

Then there’s the infrastructure. India’s logistics cost sits at roughly 14% of its GDP. Compare that to the 8% seen in most developed economies. That 6% gap is the difference between a product being a global hit or a warehouse-bound dud. You can build the most advanced EV battery in a pristine factory in Karnataka, but if it takes three weeks to reach a port because the roads are a nightmare and the bureaucratic red tape is even worse, you’ve already lost the race.

The honchos don’t like to talk about the "screwdriver" problem either. For years, "Manufacturing in India" has largely been "Assembling in India." It’s low-skill, high-volume work where workers snap pre-made modules together. It’s better than nothing, sure. But it’s a far cry from the deep-tech innovation these CEOs boast about over expensive whiskies. To truly export to the world, you have to own the IP, not just the assembly line.

There’s also the talent paradox. India produces millions of engineers every year, yet companies constantly complain they can’t find enough people with the specific skills needed for high-end precision manufacturing. The education system is still churned out for the IT services boom of 1998, while the world has moved on to 3-nanometer chips and solid-state chemistry.

So, the business elite keep talking. They’ll tell you the "India century" has arrived. They’ll show you glossy renders of smart cities and high-speed freight corridors. And to their credit, the sheer gravity of the market is pulling the world toward them. It’s no longer a question of "why India?" but "how much will it cost us to stay away?"

Still, the cynicism remains hard to shake. We’re watching a massive, expensive experiment in real-time. Can a country skip the traditional industrial evolution and jump straight into being a global high-tech exporter while its power grid still flickers and its ports are clogged? The honchos say yes, mostly because their stock options depend on that answer.

But as the subsidies eventually dry up and the initial hype fades, we’ll see what’s left standing. Is this the birth of a new industrial titan, or just another case of global capital finding a cheaper place to park its assembly lines until the next tax break comes along?

If the world is truly going to buy what India is building, the "honchos" might want to spend less time on stages and more time figuring out why a component takes longer to clear customs than it does to fly across the Pacific.

It’s one thing to build a factory. It’s another thing entirely to build a future that doesn't require a government handout to survive the first frost.