Eh, never mind. The mayors and city councils and such will make this personal.
Modi said developing an ecosystem for the manufacture of ingots, wafers and solar cells and modules would help India generate employment as well as offering other advantages.
The equipment used by the power sector across the nation should all be made in India, added the prime minister.
This is not as bad as the Soviet-inspired Licence Raj, when India was leading the Non-Aligned Movement in rejecting British Empire and US Crusader politics, economics, and other policies wholesale as Neo-Colonialism. It is a remnant that still vastly impedes India's economic, social, and political growth. India still suffers from its own version of Neo-Colonialism, in which the English-only-speaking elite established by the British Empire lords it over everyone else.
Pardon me while I go and virtually bang my head against a wall.
…
Ahem. That's better. Also, I went in the kitchen and got some comfort food.
[Insert rant about comparative advantage here.
tl;dr Countries should buy what they cannot make economically. Meddling with the powerful forces of supply and demand always ends badly.
Comparative advantage was first expounded in embryo by Adam Smith.
If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it off them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage. The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished [...] but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage.[9]
Also,
The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
You hear that, Modi? No, I don't suppose you do. Well, we shall just have to come along and hammer on you some more.
Comparative Advantage - Econlib
David Ricardo was the first to analyze comparative advantage systematically.
End rant that is too brief to explain the matter as clearly as it deserves.]
The head of state also emphasized the need to adopt an holistic approach for the agricultural sector solar supply chain, from PV-powered water pumps to decentralized, solar-powered cold storage.
Yup. We need that world-wide. Some other time I will tell you about money lying on the ground, waiting to be shoveled up, in the less-developed world, in the form of fresh fruit falling off the trees, plus vegetables that also cannot be stored and processed and brought to market without electricity. Or coffee. Or kola nuts. Or…no, I said another time.
Of course, this proposal of Modi's was not made in a vacuum.