India is not even a manufacturing rival to Vietnam. When moving some low-end manufacturing from China to Vietnam, it does make economic sense, because Vietnam can actually manufacture some of these things at more cost-competitive prices than China. Vietnam worked on making itself an objectively attractive place to setup manufacturing there.
India on the other hand was only busy with politics and talking. Apart from political convenience, India offers no objective qualities to move manufacturing there. It still cannot manufacture goods at more cost-competitive prices than China. The common Indian workforce is insufficiently educated and disciplined. It's infrastructure is a joke. Instead, you shall be urged to setup that infrastructure and educate your Indian workforce. Government policy is all over the place, and they are not gonna do anything to help you. And after all that, the Indian government is gonna come and rob you of your hard earned money, and/or arrest your executives over some arbitrary matter. India offers no actual benefit for foreign manufacturers, only political correctness.
After independence, India failed to follow in the footsteps of Australia and South Africa to leverage on its British industrial inheritance to become an industrial power. During the rise of the Asian Tigers, India failed to grab at least some of that manufacturing for itself, despite having an enormous English-speaking populace. When China was rising to become a manufacturing superpower, India had failed to rise up as a worthy alternative. Now when Cold War 2.0 had begun, India is failing yet again to compete for that manufacturing redistribution, but this time to smaller countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh. There were some wins for India, but India is still failing to become truly competitive. It is only a matter of time before these current batch of companies who moved manufacturing to India start walking out again. Nothing will truly change in India, it is already putting itself on the path to the middle-income trap.
