Murli Manohar Joshi finds ‘world’s biggest mobile factory’ in Noida no big deal

“What good is setting-up the world’s largest mobile factory if you still have to import technology from abroad?” asked veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Sunday, taking a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Make in India initiative.

The Samsung mobile factory in Noida, billed as the largest of its kind in the world, was jointly inaugurated on July 9 by visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in and PM Modi. Centre is promoting the inauguration of the plant as a major success story of the BJP-led government.

But Joshi remains unimpressed. The dig at Samsung plant by the BJP ideologue came during an address on Technology and Democracy to commemorate the 81st birth anniversary of late journalist Prabhash Joshi, the founder editor of Hindi daily Jansatta.

“We can’t be a techno-economic power this way. We need to focus on indigenous technology,” remarked Joshi during his speech at Rajghat, which was organised by former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) TN Chaturvedi.

Joshi remained critical of push towards digitisation and expanding reach of Information Technology under the current government, noting that the information flow was still being controlled by countries such as China, Russia and the US. He said that India, being the one of the largest market and the fastest growing economy, had much to offer to foreign companies.

“We may have become the world’s sixth largest GDP by overtaking France. We might overtake China someday too. But the hub of information will even then remain in countries such as US, China and Russia, home to companies such as Google and Alibaba,” said the former Union HRD minister.

Not much for the Indian taxpayer, shot in the arm for Make in India

Talking to National Herald on the Samsung’s Noida factory, Navkendar Singh from global market intelligence International Data Corporation (IDC) said that the factory plant won’t affect the smartphone prices in any significant way.

“The current smartphone prices in India are not high. They haven’t gone up in the last six months. So, there won’t be an effect on prices by the opening of this Samsung plant,” said Singh, an associate director at IDC India.

He, however, said that the Samsung factory was a “shot-in-the-arm’ for the Modi government’s Make in India policy. “What this plant does is that it sends out a message to the world that there is something right in the Indian business ecosystem. It is a big positioning statement,” said Singh.

According to Samsung, its production capacity in Noida would increase from 68 million to 120 million units by 2020 once the new factory is fully operational. Samsung India CEO HC Hong said that the factory would position India as a “global export hub” for mobile phones.

Navkendar Singh believes that once the factory is fully operational, India would start exporting mobile phones to the markets of Africa, Middle-East and south-east Asia.

He explained that rising labor costs in China was a major reason behind multinationals looking for alternate manufacturing destinations."India, on the other hand, continues to be one of the fastest growing major economies in the world. We are also one of the biggest domestic markets," he said.