I recently came across some interesting data — India's adult literacy rate in 2023 is only 77%, with female literacy at just 70%. This level is comparable to China around 1990. At first glance, it's just an education statistic, but it actually reflects a deeper issue: India aims to replicate the successful manufacturing model of East Asia, but the gap in human capital has become the biggest stumbling block.

China was able to rapidly achieve a manufacturing boom after the reform and opening-up, often due to a prerequisite that is overlooked — having already built a labor reserve through basic education and gender equality. India’s path is different. In the decades following independence, the country's resource allocation strategy was "prioritize higher education, neglect basic education," resulting in an elite class suited for IT and financial services, but a lack of standardized skills among the bottom-tier workforce needed for modern manufacturing.

The problem is, high-end talent alone cannot support industrial upgrading. Large-scale industrialization requires millions of industrial workers who understand basic operations, not just elites. In recent years, India has been trying to catch up by improving primary and secondary school enrollment, but the public education system remains inefficient, and constraints in national governance still exist, so the quality of basic education cannot keep up. This means that, in the short term, India’s ability to seize the opportunities from global manufacturing shifts will face a real skills shortage challenge.