Reskilling is key, India needs to become a manufacturing nation: Amitabh Kant

New Delhi [India], October 22 : India's G20 Sherpa and former Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Tuesday doubled down that "reskilling" of workforce is most important because India can't grow only on the back of services.
"We need manufacturing," G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said, speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2024 here in the national capital.
"India can't grow only on the back of services. India needs to become a manufacturing nation. 17.5 per cent of your GDP comes from manufacturing. You need to take it to 25 per cent. You need to urbanize, because 500 million people are going to get into the process of urbanization in the next five decades."
India needs to fire on all cylinders - manufacturing, services, urbanization, and agriculture - and for that reskilling is key, he said.
Growing from USD 4 trillion to an ambition target of USD 30 trillion means India's GDP has to grow 9 times.
Kant said, "That's a challenge, and to overcome that India needs to become a key part of the value chain."
"That's the challenge. And I think for overcoming that challenge, India needs to really become a very integral part of value chains and penetrate global value chains. You know, you need to export in a very big way."
Speaking about semiconductor, he said for countries to become dependent on chips from abroad is very concerning.
"That's why the government has taken this decision to make India the semiconductor hub," he said.
The government has so far approved five semiconductor units in India, of which construction in two sites is on, and soon the work in the other three will start. The companies have already made a cumulative investment of almost Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
Further, he said the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is inevitable, and will bring in "new kinds of jobs". In the same breath, he advocated that AI should be used to create a better society, to improve human development in place of creating Large Language Models (LLMs).
India's stance has always been that the internet and every other emerging technology should be deployed in a "safe and trusted" manner, he added.