Build on engineering and design strength to become a Product Nation

The promise was to build on India's engineering and design-services strength and combine product design with manufacturing to become a major Product Nation. Official evidence shows active progress on both sides of that intent: the Design Linked Incentive Scheme supports domestic chip-design startups and MSMEs, and PIB reported 23 sanctioned chip-design projects, 72 companies using advanced design tools, 28 student chips taped out, and 278 institutions engaged in semiconductor design and research. On the manufacturing side, ECMS and PLI-linked electronics schemes are building component and hardware manufacturing capacity, with ECMS applications showing investment commitments of ₹1.15 lakh crore and estimated production of about ₹10.34 lakh crore over six years. PIB also reported that laptops, servers and desktops are now being manufactured in India under the IT hardware PLI ecosystem, with smartphones becoming India's top exported commodity in CY 2025. However, the manifesto outcome of becoming a recognised Product Nation remains broad and still in progress, so the status should be on track rather than fulfilled. Budget: ECMS was approved with ₹22,919 crore and later enhanced in Budget 2026 to ₹40,000 crore; the Semicon India programme has a ₹76,000 crore outlay and the DLI Scheme has a ₹1,000 crore outlay, but no single budget line named Product Nation was found.