Shades of 1991.

"As of 2020, China was the largest exporter in the world, with an approximately 15% share of global trade, according to UNCTAD statistics," ET. But, as global supply chains were disrupted by the pandemic countries are looking to diversify to other countries. India is seking to become self-reliant through 'Armanirbhar Bharat' and "more specifically, the PLI (Production Linked Incentive) schemes that have been announced for diverse key industrial sectors". Self-reliance has been tried in the past with the result that our manufacturing sector has shrunk from 17.9% of GDP in 1995 to to 13% in 2020. "The word atmanirbhar can be translated as self-reliance or it can be translated as self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is what Nehru and Indira Gandhi tried in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a horrible and a terrible flop. We had only a 3.5% Hindu rate of growth. The number of poor people doubled in 30 years after independence," said Swaminathan Aiyar. The world has experienced a severe shortage of semiconductor chips affecting everything from smartphones to video games to cars, wikipedia. It takes a lot of money and time to set up a chip fabricating plant, Outlook. "According to The Indian Express, India has tried setting up chip manufacturing units in the past but it never took off due to lack of long-term vision and government incentives, and poor planning." Now, "The government is planning to provide incentives worth Rs 76,000 crore (Rs 760 billion) towards setting up over 20 semiconductor design, components manufacturing and display fabrication (fab) units over the next six years, in a bid to make India a hub for electronics," ET. Continuous steady electricity supply is absolutely essential in chip manufacturing plants, said Dr Sanjay Banerjee, after an electricity outage in Texas, Spectrum News 1. Toxic gases flow through double-walled stainless steel tubing which are constantly monitored, the air in the manufacturing room has to pass through HEPA filters and temperature must be kept constant, or else mask aligners may go out of alignment. Mask aligners can cost $10-100 million. In October 2021, people were warned of "intermittent rotational load shedding", which is a euphemism for black out, in Delhi, due to shortage of coal, news18. A few days back Tata Power DDL published a schedule of power shutdown in parts of Delhi, lasting from 2-9 hours due to maintenance work. And Delhi is the capital of India. To encourage self-reliance, "More than 3,000 tariff increases have affected 70% of imports. India entered 11 trade agreements in the 10 years under previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On Modi's watch it hasn't signed even one," wrote Andy Mukherjee. "India is parched for capital expenditure, and its trade deficits are ballooning, particularly with China." So high is the deficit that, "Of the accretion of $31.2 billion in July-September 2021 in foreign exchange reserves, $17.86 was by way of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) support it received from the International Monetary Fund on 23 August 2021," wrote Jagdish Shettigar and Pooja Misra. "Importantly, IMF support comes with a baggage of conditions as was the case in 1991 -- the support came with the condition that India initiate big ticket economic reforms." 2021 was a bit like 1991, when we had the balance of payments crisis, wikipedia? We are blissfully ignorant.