Between Operations Gibraltar And Sindoor, A Missed Industrial Revolution

NDTV

24-06-2025

There are times when a peek back into history offers unique insights into what is happening today. In these politically and ideologically polarised times, keyboard warriors continue to engage in social media warfare even as serious analysts examine the implications of Operation Sindoor.
The authors are least interested in that kind of discourse. They would rather examine the real implications of Operation Sindoor by tracing the trajectory taken by India since Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar to capture Jammu & Kashmir in 1965. Perhaps two of the most spectacular achievements of India in the preceding sixty years are the Green and White Revolutions. All serious analysts or scholars agree that there is no comparison really between India and Pakistan, except the fact that the latter has a habit of invoking nuclear blackmail. But India was significantly weaker and vulnerable in 1965. The fact is: even as the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, grappled with war against Pakistan, he had to contend with a looming famine and mass starvation simultaneously.
Narendra Modi faces no such challenges. The authors think that irrespective of political parties and despite the persistence of bitterness in public discourse, the journey of India between 1965 and 2025 has been remarkable, a testament to the vision of leaders, technocrats and scientists. Two politicians, one technocrat and one scientist, stand out as eternal heroes of India: Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then agriculture minister C Subramaniam, agriculture scientists Dr MS Swaminathan, and technocrat Varghese Kurien.
Even as war loomed and then raged with Pakistan in 1965, Shastri took some key decisions that transformed India forever. The first was to give a free hand to his agriculture minister Subramaniam, to experiment aggressively with high-yield seeds, irrigation and the use of fertilisers. The actual implementation was left to a scientist called Norman Borlaug and the Indian genius Swaminathan. Of course, it was the Indian farmer - beginning with Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh - who made the Green Revolution a reality. At the same time, Shastri had a quiet meeting with a 'manager' named Varghese Kurien in an obscure village in Gujarat. Kurien agreed to head the National Dairy Development Board, and the rest is history.
Just look at some numbers to see how far India has travelled over the last sixty years. The population then was close to 500 million and is about 1,450 million now. The total foodgrain production back then was 89 million tonnes (it actually declined to about 75 million tonnes the next year, leading to a near famine), and it is 350 million tonnes in 2024-25. Back then, the total wheat output was 12.3 million tonnes. In 2024-25, it is estimated at about 120 million tonnes. The total milk output back then was 17 million tons. In 2024-25, it touched 240 million tonnes. While accurate data for 1964/65 is not available, total horticulture output was estimated at about 30 million tonnes. In 2024-25, it is 365 million tonnes. The total eggs produced in India back then were 55 billion, while in 2024-25, it was 143 billion.
There are not many Indians today who can personally recall the humiliation India was subjected to in that era. India was hopelessly dependent on food aid from countries like the United States and Canada, whose leaders often took delight in humiliating India even as they reluctantly sent food grains. And still, about 2 lakh Indians died of starvation between 1965 and 1967.
Today, while the population has exploded and touched three times those levels, almost on every possible food and consumption item, our production has gone up by five or ten times, if not more. India is one of the leading exporters of food grains, fruits and vegetables. Imagine the predicament for Narendra Modi if India had to grapple with severe food scarcity and insecurity, as it did in 1965. The per capita availability of food grains and horticulture in India is more than 250 kilograms a year, or more than 20 kilograms every month. On top of that, the government provides five kilograms of free food to 800 million Indians every month. In Pakistan, citizens struggle for food now just as ordinary Indians struggled in the era of Operation Gibraltar.
But as the CVoter tracker during the conflict shows, a majority of Indians are very clear that our problem is not Pakistan, but the force behind Pakistan, that is, China. We can leave Pakistan at the moment, as it is hardly a competition on socio-economic scales. It's a failed state, and all we need to do is get a deterrent from any terror attacks coming out of that failed state. In normal times, we would have even wished Pakistan well for its own peaceful existence with a growing economy. But right now, we don't even bother with that. Our main issue in every possible sphere is with China. The security aspect remains where it was after the 1962 humiliation, but it is the economic scale that should bother us more. And that debate starts and ends in the manufacturing sector.
While critical analysis of Operation Sindoor continues, one significant conclusion can be safely drawn: a very big role was played by systems and equipment manufactured within India. The BrahMos and Akash missiles and many other varieties of drones that were deployed in the conflict were manufactured almost entirely in India.
Yet, the conflict also revealed the one big failure of India as a nation in the sixty years since Operation Gibraltar. It has repeatedly missed the industrial and manufacturing bus while its Asian peers have surged ahead. Despite the historic economic reforms of 1991 that transformed India and enabled it to reduce poverty, India has come a cropper when it comes to manufacturing at a global scale. Thanks to mobile phone handsets, India is considered a success story at least in domestic manufacturing in electronics. Exports in 2024 were estimated to be around $30 billion. Tiny Vietnam, in contrast, recorded electronics exports of $150 billion the same year.
This is not to say that the industrial and manufacturing sector in India is primitive. It is huge and throbbing with productivity and global competitiveness in some sectors. After all, 16% of a $4 trillion economy works out to more than $600 billion, almost double the entire GDP of Pakistan. Yet, it remains the biggest failure of economic policymaking. China, too, had a primitive manufacturing base in 1965. But today, manufacturing contributes 30% of the GDP, ensuring China has emerged as the 'factory' of the world.
According to the latest trade data available, India has run a trade deficit of almost $100 billion with China, which is half the total trade deficit. The deficit on its own is a serious issue. What is worse is India's dependence on China in critical sectors like electronics, telecom equipment, pharmaceutical intermediates and heavy machinery. Operation Sindoor revealed how China has been using Pakistan as a proxy and client state to contain and disrupt India. Imagine a scenario in which a conflict results in China cutting off supplies of critical equipment.
So yes, as one reflects on the journey between Operation Gibraltar and Operation Sindoor, it is worthwhile celebrating success stories like the Green and White Revolutions. But it is also a wake-up call. Unless Indian manufacturing takes giant strides in the coming decade, it will never be a serious global power.