Manufacturing-led transformation for realizing India’s 2047 Vision in the context of a fractured trading system: challenges, opportunities, and strategic interventions

India has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as the fastest-growing large economy. What are the prospects of India further accelerating its growth rate and emerging as the next growth pole of the world economy, which would be required to realize India’s Vision 2047 of a developed economy? This article explores the key opportunities, prospects, and policy priorities for sustaining India’s growth momentum in a fractured trading system. It argues that a manufacturing-led transformation is imperative for India to realize its development aspirations of building a developed economy by 2047 and to address the challenge of employment creation and sustainable management of the balance of payments. As global companies restructure their supply chains on China + 1 lines, India can potentially leverage its geopolitical and demographic sweet spots to build manufacturing capacities to feed growing domestic and global demand and tap the opportunities presented by the digital and green industrial revolutions. It is concluded with some policy lessons for tapping the opportunities for a manufacturing-led transformation of the country to a developed nation status by 2047.