Rajiv Bajaj Bolting Manufacturing Maze Offers Renewal Pathway

Manufacturing Mindsets: Rajiv Bajaj’s Narrative on India, China, and the Lessons for Industrial Renewal

By Sesh Kumar Pulipaka

New Delhi, April 22, 2025: Rajiv Bajaj’s critiques, stated in a 2020 opinion piece, of India’s manufacturing mindset, contrasting it with China’s, stands as a lamppost for societal, corporate, and educational barriers to industrial renewal. At a time when ‘Big Bang’ reform in India’s industries is being envisaged amid looming shadow of tariff disruptions, a revisit to Bajaj’s diagnosis is relevant.

Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, wrote on India’s manufacturing mindset and its comparative trajectory with China. Bajaj offered insights on India’s industrial stagnation, especially in sectors beyond motorcycles, can be attributed not only to governmental and infrastructural bottlenecks but also to societal attitudes, corporate shortsightedness, and educational misalignments.

Bajaj’s personal experience in building a world-class R&D base at Bajaj Auto challenges the dominant narrative that places the blame for India’s economic underperformance solely on external competition or governmental failures.

Bajaj’s insights and available literature on India’s industrial strategy, education-to-employment mismatch, and the comparative manufacturing prowess of China together call for a shift in national outlook and corporate vision.

Manufacturing as Mindset: The Case Made by Rajiv Bajaj

Rajiv Bajaj’s essay is as much a satire on India’s “anti-China WhatsApp nationalism” as it is a wake-up call to introspect on domestic failures. He opens by mocking the populist outcry against Chinese dominance in global supply chains and consumer markets.

Bajaj affirms that while Chinese methods and ethics are open to critique, India’s position is not simply a result of China’s aggression — it is also a consequence of India’s complacency. Bajaj, drawing from his deep industry experience, pivots the discussion toward a rarely acknowledged factor: the lack of seriousness within Indian companies to build genuine manufacturing capacity, talent pipelines, and global vision.

In a striking personal anecdote, Bajaj recounts his experiences in the early 2000s, trying to hire engineering graduates from reputed colleges to work on 100-cc engine R&D projects. He faced resistance not from students, but from Training and Placement Officers who prioritized placements in IT service firms over core manufacturing roles.

Even when Bajaj Auto offered triple the salary, the general aversion to “shop floor” jobs was evident. This aversion, Bajaj argues, was not because of lack of opportunities or pay but because of a systemic devaluation of manufacturing as a respectable, aspirational career path.

According to a 2023 report by the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP stagnated around 16-17 per cent for over a decade, despite campaigns like “Make in India” launched in 2014.

Contrast this with China, where manufacturing contributes over 28 per cent to GDP. China trained a massive workforce in technical and vocational skills and created an ecosystem where manufacturing engineers were well-compensated, respected, and integrated into national development goals (World Bank, 2022).

Bajaj Auto and TVS, he noted, bucked the trend. They invested heavily in homegrown R&D, offered competitive salaries, and redefined manufacturing careers as ‘sexy’ and futuristic. They built products that outcompeted not only Chinese counterparts but also gained traction globally.

The story of Bajaj’s market dominance in Africa, through thoughtful product positioning between high-end Japanese motorcycles and low-quality Chinese knockoffs, exemplifies this success. Their bikes, assembled, reliable, and appropriately priced, replaced Chinese models in markets like Nigeria where motorcycles double as taxis.

The anecdote also touches on the cultural affinity that African users developed with Indian bikes, contrasting with the transactional attitude toward Chinese imports.

By 2018, India became the world’s largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, overtaking China. Brands like Bajaj and TVS expanded their global footprints and even acquired prestigious European brands such as KTM.

Bajaj points out that Chinese motorcycle manufacturers failed to penetrate these global markets not because of geopolitics but because of subpar quality and absence of brand credibility. Honda’s decision to shift most of its R&D operations to India further validates the rise of Indian design and manufacturing excellence in this niche.

Why Not in Other Sectors?

Rajiv Bajaj’s lament is that this manufacturing success in two-wheelers wasn’t replicated in other sectors like electronics, pharmaceuticals, or computing. He attributes this failure to what he calls ‘short-term and geographically limited vision’ among Indian entrepreneurs.

He contrasts the focused, long-term, high-investment approach of companies like Bajaj Auto with the risk-averse, margin-maximizing tendencies of most Indian industrialists, who prefer quick profits through trading, low-end assembly, or software outsourcing rather than capital-intensive manufacturing.

This diagnosis finds support in data published by NITI Aayog and McKinsey. For instance, McKinsey’s 2021 report on India’s manufacturing potential noted that India’s top 25 manufacturers account for a disproportionately low share of global exports in high-tech sectors.

Moreover, while India is one of the largest consumers of smartphones and electronics, over 85 per cent of components are imported, mostly from China or Southeast Asia.

Educational Disconnect and Social Perceptions

Bajaj’s critique of Indian education is blunt but accurate. He highlights that even graduate from elite institutions like IITs and NITs often lacked fundamental knowledge of mechanical engineering, preferring coding careers over design or manufacturing.

His decision to interview candidates in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Marathi, in order to identify hidden talent, reflects a deep understanding of the social and linguistic barriers in India’s education system.

This problem is mirrored in various national assessments. The Annual Employability Survey by Aspiring Minds (now SHL) consistently shows that less than 20 per cent of Indian engineering graduates are employable in core engineering roles.

Furthermore, the National Employability Report (2022) shows that IT services absorb the majority of engineers not because they are better trained for coding, but because other sectors are not hiring at scale or offering competitive salaries.

Reversing the Chinese Advantage

Bajaj’s sarcastic take on Indian attitudes toward labour and entrepreneurship points to deeper socio-economic pathologies. He critiques the national hypocrisy of wanting to beat China while working nine-to-five and refusing to dirty one’s hands on the factory floor.

In his words, Indians want economic self-reliance without individual sacrifice, expecting the government to do what entrepreneurs and citizens refuse to.

This aligns with the insights of economists like Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, who have often pointed out that India cannot become a manufacturing superpower without social legitimacy for industrial work.

They argue that unless labour laws are liberalized, land acquisition made smoother, and industrial culture revitalized at the grassroots level, India’s global competitiveness will remain limited to niche areas rather than broader sectors.

Bajaj provides a microcosmic example of what could be India’s industrial future if stakeholders —corporates, policymakers, educators, and parents — embrace a mindset of long-term vision, investment in technical competence, and cultural acceptance of manufacturing as a noble pursuit.

India’s rise as the largest two-wheeler manufacturer was not an accident but the result of strategic thinking, persistent effort, and a refusal to follow the herd.

If similar conviction and innovation were applied across sectors, India’s ambition to replace China as the factory of the world might move from slogan to reality.

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