Professor Aggarwal offers recommendations for India’s industrial policy in two newspaper articles

Industrial policies are back on the scene as national economies seek to succeed in global competition amid the Covid-19 pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions such as the US-China trade war. Against this backdrop, Prof. Aradhna Aggarwal discusses the potential of India's industrial policy strategy in two newspaper articles, highlighting the need for an export strategy and a revamping of the SEZs. The more recent article that came out in the Economic & Political Weekly in January 2022 takes a critical look at the concept of self-reliance, which has recently been reintroduced into Indian development discourse. Prof. Aggarwal argues that in order to become self-reliant in a globalized world, India needs to become internationally competitive across diverse economic sectors and therefore requires a well-designed export strategy. Another article published in the Financial Express in October 2021 advocates SEZs as an industrial policy tool with great potential for economic development. Prof. Aggarwal emphasizes the need to leverage the advantages of SEZs to revive the Indian economy and provides a list of practical recommendations on how to make SEZs in India more attractive to private investors.