Why can’t the Indian manufacturing industry save the Indian people

-the dilemma of the oxygen generator

There are 300,000 to 400,000 new cases every day, and the total number of confirmed cases a day ago has accumulated 2.54 million.
The supplies and services related to the epidemic have already shown an out-of-control situation in the Indian black market. The original price of 100 US dollars of oxygen tanks has been directly doubled, the original price of 7 US dollars of ambulance services have doubled 10 times, and the original price of 7 US dollars of burnt firewood has also been doubled. 10 times. The price of a bottle of 50 liters of oxygen on the black market has been fired to US$660 to US$1330, while the average national income of India is only US$2,120 a year.

At the end of last month, the Deputy Spokesperson of the United Nations Secretary-General Hacker said that the United Nations is ready to provide integrated supply chain assistance to India, while India said that there is no need, I am fine, I can do it myself.

Is Indian manufacturing really good? ?

Since the second wave of the outbreak in India in April, China has provided more than 5,000 ventilators and 21,569 oxygen generators to India. The United Kingdom provided 3 oxygen generators, France provided 8 units, Russia provided 20 units, and the United States was relatively strong, providing a total of 275 units.

According to a report from “India Today”, in local hospitals in Punjab, India, most of the ventilators allocated by the local government for life-saving purchases have serious quality problems and have to be left unused in the hospital. These ventilators took an hour to two hours before they broke down and the patients couldn’t bear it.
There are a total of 80 ventilators in this hospital, 71 of which are scrapped, and these ventilators are provided by the PM Care Fund.

The 250 ventilators sent by the Indian government to the state last year had a book value of 2.5 billion rupees, which is equivalent to 34 million U.S. dollars. Basically, problems occurred within a few hours of installation. At this time, I have to say that 250 units cost 34 million US dollars, which is equivalent to 130,000 US dollars per unit.

The government purchases the 250units ventilators for the PM Care Fund, whose full name is the Prime Minister’s Emergency Citizens’ Relief Fund, which was established by Modi last year. The main purpose is to attract donations from the people to respond to the epidemic in India.

ps. To give you a set of data comparisons, before March 31 last year, New York State had ordered 17,000 ventilators from China, each for US$25,000.

pps. ventilators, the production capacity is limited on weekdays and cannot be used so much. For example, the demand for medical ventilators in the Chinese market in 2018 was 14,700 units, and in 2019 it was 16,900 units. Major enterprises basically produce several thousand a year. Then the epidemic came and demand soared. By April last year, China’s weekly production capacity increased to 2,200 units, accounting for one-fifth of the global production capacity.

Can’t India make oxygen?

The hospital demand is 8,000 tons, and there is a gap of 1,000 tons. Theoretically speaking, efforts to expand production and then accept a little foreign aid are enough to survive.
However, India continues to use 40% of its oxygen in industry even when the people across the country are queuing to die, causing the gap to widen to 3,000 tons.

Does the Indian government not know the importance of oxygen? Not really. When the epidemic first broke out, the Indian government allocated 201 billion rupees to plan to build 162 oxygen plants. However, the government spent 8 months planning and then started bidding. In the end, only 33 factories started construction.

Where is the dilemma of the Indian oxygen machine and even the entire manufacturing industry?

1. Capacity

The Indian railway system, from the partition of India and Pakistan in 1951 to the present, has only increased its mileage by 21%, which is barely the level of British India in 1930. In contrast, China accounts for 7 of the world’s top ten ports. The national railway operating mileage has reached more than 131,000 kilometers, and the total mileage of high-speed railways accounted for two-thirds of the world’s total. This allows China to spread across the country in a short time. Mobilize resources internally to fight the epidemic.

2. Manufacturing

-Labor

The production of oxygen concentrator ventilator has a threshold. From research and development to supply chain integration to clinical trial, the production cycle is long; the entire production chain is long, and the number of parts required varies from 1,000 to 5,000.
Although India has huge labor resources, it is different from China’s compulsory education system. India has long pursued elite education, which has led to serious polarization in the quality of its domestic labor force.

There is a saying that India, with a population of 1.3 billion, is actually two countries: 100 million urban elites and 1.2 billion urban and rural areas in extreme poverty.
The biggest prerequisite for the demographic dividend is that the labor force is fully employed. However, while India is short of people in the manufacturing industry, it has a 20% youth labor unemployment rate.
Those highly educated workers are unwilling to work in manufacturing industries with poor working conditions and low salaries; while the uneducated labor force completely lacks basic labor quality and cannot reach the minimum level of junior high school education on the industrial assembly line. Labor requirements.

-Infrastructure

1.) Traffic capacity is limited.

Specifically mentioned above. (There was a news in 2019 that a train called Tribute India broke down near Dundra, about 200 kilometers away from the Indian capital of New Delhi. Officials from the Indian Railway Department explained that the failure was caused by a cattle attack.
The truth is unknown to us. The railway department said that the high-speed rail, at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, claimed to have caught up with and surpassed China. ps. The officials of the railway department should have never been to China, nor have they experienced the speed and comfort of China’s high-speed rail. )

2.) Electricity

India’s annual electricity gap is more than 10%, making it one of the countries with the lowest per capita electricity consumption in the world. For example, in 2012, India’s three major power grids had a blackout of the century, and 600 million people across the country had no electricity.
Even now, nearly 5 million Indians living in cities in India experience power outages for more than 6 hours a day, not to mention rural areas.

3. Policy

If you want to build a factory and develop production, you basically have to spend money to go through the end.
Moreover, it is not only that local laws and regulations inexplicably increase the cost of manufacturing to form arbitrage space. There are other administrative barriers among Indian states. In the name of protecting local industries, the entry of manufacturing products from other places is prohibited. The pattern of drawing the ground as a prison.

4. Lack of a unified deployment system

The biggest hindrance in Indian manufacturing is the country’s lack of a unified deployment system, and there is basically no possibility of concentrating on major issues, even when life is at stake.
India is actually a strong steel manufacturing country, ranking second in the world. (In 2020, 1.053 billion tons will be manufactured in China and 99.6 million tons will be manufactured in India.)

The manufacture of steel requires oxygen. Although there are different standards for industrial oxygen and medical oxygen, it is relatively easy to exchange each other.
For example, during the epidemic crisis in Wuhan, the oxygen consumption of various hospitals soared to more than ten times the daily peak value. It was WISCO who made the slogan “It is better to have less oxygen in the blast furnace and not let the patients lack oxygen”, and immediately began to follow the medical oxygen quality standards. In production, the production capacity began to explode at a speed of more than three times.
And India still maintains 40% oxygen used in industry.

The epidemic in India is not so much a natural disaster as it is a man-made disaster.
In India, medical care is a privilege. Since 2000, more than 70% of India’s public health expenditures have flowed into Indian private medical institutions, and by 2015 this figure had become 80%.
These private medical institutions will not assume social responsibilities, they just want to make money from the epidemic. The previous Indian government even deliberately dismantled the only little medical infrastructure in some remote areas.