Regardless of a push for “Make in India” and the promise of a worldwide manufacturing shift away from China, many Indian entrepreneurs are discovering that their largest problem isn’t overseas competitors—it’s navigating India’s bureaucratic maze.
A submit on X on Sunday has struck a chord throughout India’s startup and MSME ecosystem, providing a biting, satirical record of 25 the reason why it is so laborious to run a manufacturing unit in India. From absurd paperwork necessities to arbitrary authorities interventions, the thread has reignited the controversy over India’s ease of doing enterprise—particularly in comparison with Asian manufacturing giants like China and Vietnam.
“If you’re a courageous Indian who decides to start out an MSME or a producing firm or a manufacturing unit,” the submit begins, “A Municipal clerk / officer can reject your land registration file due to a lacking annexure on the sixteenth web page of the seventeenth kind.”
It solely will get extra exasperating from there. “Your GST utility could possibly be marked for bodily verification regardless of digital Aadhaar verification, as a result of your Insta photograph and Aadhaar card photograph, doesn’t match.” In one other occasion, “The Salt Commissioner’s workplace can ship you a discover for misuse of salt pan land, regardless of your land being 600 kms from the closest sea.”
The submit is not only a rant—it’s a mirrored image of why many Indian producers battle to outlive. Entrepreneurs spend extra time battling purple tape than competing on product, value, or high quality. “That’s why most aspiring entrepreneurs stop and return residence questioning if they need to have merely caught to a standard salaried job.”
In distinction, China and Vietnam have constructed strong ecosystems for producers, streamlining permissions, providing incentives, and enabling speedy scale. Indian entrepreneurs, against this, face energy connection delays, environmental notices for bushes that don’t exist, and penalty threats for misplaced commas.
Even essentially the most decided battle to maintain going: “Few of the good souls who persevere, they spend most of their time and vitality combating the Indian govt equipment on compliance. Not China / Vietnam on value and high quality.”
Till India addresses these systemic points on the bottom—not simply on paper—it dangers shedding out on the worldwide manufacturing pivot that might have been its defining financial alternative.
