The North News
New Delhi, December 10
The Centre government ‘s ambitions to become a more self-reliant manufacturing and digital powerhouse have taken a decisive step forward, as the government reports major progress across a suite of flagship policy initiatives — from production incentives and startup support to sweeping business reforms and a national logistics overhaul. At the centre of this push is the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, launched to strengthen domestic manufacturing and boost exports across 14 strategic sectors. With an outlay of ₹1.97 lakh crore, the programme has already generated more than ₹1.88 lakh crore in actual investment as of June 2025. Officials say the scheme has spurred incremental production worth over ₹17 lakh crore and created more than 12.3 lakh jobs, both directly and indirectly.
Export activity under the scheme has crossed ₹7.5 lakh crore, with electronics, pharmaceuticals, telecom and food processing emerging as standout performers. Complementing this industrial push is the Startup India initiative, introduced in 2016 and now one of the world’s fastest-growing entrepreneurship missions. More than 2 lakh startups have been formally recognised, collectively generating 21 lakh jobs. Women entrepreneurs, the government notes, have played a transformative role, with nearly half of all recognised startups boasting at least one woman director.
Parallel efforts to democratise India’s digital economy have gained momentum through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) — an ambitious experiment to break the dominance of large e-commerce platforms. The network has processed more than 326 million orders to date, with 18.2 million orders handled in October 2025 alone and daily transactions averaging nearly six lakh.
To promote balanced regional growth, the government’s One District One Product (ODOP) programme has identified more than 1,240 unique products across 775 districts. Meanwhile, PM Ekta Malls, designed to showcase these local goods, are being set up across states — with work orders already issued in 25 of the 27 states whose proposals were cleared.
Efforts to ease doing business have accelerated through a series of reforms led by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). These include the long-running Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP), a renewed Reducing Compliance Burden (RCB) exercise, and the Jan Vishwas Act aimed at decriminalising minor regulatory violations.
Seven editions of BRAP have been completed, with the eighth — BRAP 2026 — launched in November 2025. A companion initiative, District BRAP, is now cascading reforms to the local level, targeting bottlenecks in industrial clusters and small enterprise ecosystems.
A comprehensive review of state single-window systems has produced a new guidebook requiring eight essential and five optional features to streamline approvals and improve investor experience.
Under the RCB framework, more than 47,000 compliances have been reduced, including 16,108 simplified, 22,287 digitised, 4,458 decriminalised and 4,270 scrapped altogether. The forthcoming Jan Vishwas Amendment Bill, 2025, covering 355 provisions, aims to widen this effort further.
The government is also working on centralised KYC standards and a formal Regulatory Impact Assessment mechanism, signalling a move towards more predictable policymaking.
The National Single Window System has processed over 11,500 approvals in November 2025 alone and more than 8.2 lakh approvals cumulatively.
Infrastructure planning gets a digital overhaul
Logistics and infrastructure planning, long fragmented across ministries, are being unified under the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, launched in 2021. The digital platform integrates data from 57 ministries and departments, with more than 1,700 geospatial data layers now available.
The portal, recently opened to the private sector, offers analytics tools designed to assist infrastructure developers, consultants and researchers. District-level master plans, piloted in 28 aspirational districts, will soon be rolled out across all 112 such districts, enabling local authorities to plan economic and social infrastructure using advanced geospatial tools.
Taken together, these initiatives mark one of the most sweeping attempts to rewire India’s economic and regulatory framework in decades — an effort the government argues is essential to boosting competitiveness, attracting investment and positioning India as a global manufacturing and innovation hub.
