India is used to travelling on the "dirt road".

India levied tariffs on imports from the US in retaliation for US tariffs on steel and aluminium exports from India to the US. Although this was forced on us the worry is that, "Internally, bureaucratic forces have regrouped to return India to import substitution," wrote Prof A Panagariya, who was Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog for two years. "Despite repeated assertions that 'Make in India' is about making for the world, in reality, it is the 'Make in India for Indians' view that is winning." In fact, customs duties were increased in this year's budget, much before Donald Trump got into the act. The reforms in 1991 were to end "import licensing on all products other than consumer goods", followed by "complete dismantling of import licensing regime in 2001 and a decline in the average industrial tariff from 113% in 1990-91 to 12% in 2007-08". The results were impressive. "Between 2003-04 and 2011-12, India's GDP grew 8.2% annually leading to a massive fall in poverty", "imports of goods and services expanded from $85 billion in 2002 to $642 billion in 2011-12", while exports and remittances expanded "from $92 billion to $518 billion over the same period". "Sadly, our current turn to import substitution threatens to return us from the turnpike on which we have been travelling all these years on to the dirt road." This is a frantic attempt to increase jobs before next year's general elections. Indian manufacturers have nearly lost the smartphone market to Chinese and Korean companies. While Samsung is to set up a new factory in Noida to make 120 million units in the next few years, the share of Micromax dropped from 16% of the market in the last quarter of 2016 to 5% in the last quarter of 2017. Indian manufacturers have thrown in the towel and are looking for cheap Chinese products which they can rebrand and sell in India. Indian leaders believe that they can force people to do what they want, wrote Prof S Rajagopalan. Jawaharlal Nehru tried central planning, Indira Gandhi nationalized banks and then proclaimed the Emergency to enforce her beliefs, and Prime Minister Modi has "the flawed belief that directing people in a way that is inconsistent with their preferences and plans leads to superior results". The Right to Education Act resulted in falling standards as small private schools shut down and teachers had no incentive to teach because children could not be failed. Fees for middle-class children have shy-rocketed to compensate for 25% of seats reserved for children from poor families. Have they learnt? Modi is to force private hospitals to provide treatment at much lower costs to over 500 million poor people. Middle class people will be unable to afford healthcare as hospitals increase charges to compensate. You can't win elections without pleasing the vote bank. Even if we go back to the "dirt road".