Industrialist Sajjan Jindal urges govt to strengthen domestic manufacturing sector

India needs to strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity in various areas, including antibiotics, to reduce dependence on China, industrialist Sajjan Jindal said on Wednesday. Almost entire requirement of raw material required for antibiotics is imported from China, which means that it controls the Indian market for antibiotics, the JSW Group chairman said in a statement.

"India should not become a victim to the Chinese strategy of incapacitating the critical sectors of our economy. It is high time the government acts on strengthening and expanding the manufacturing sector," he said. In a country like India, where the population is large and consumption is huge, "we cannot become slave to Chinese dominance," he said, adding the country needs a firm policy to protect the manufacturing industry from such predatory tactics.

China, Jindal said, exploits its manufacturing scale to manufacture goods of critical importance and then dumps it into other countries at an undercut price which makes the local industry unviable and they are forced to shut operations.