On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a very significant appeal. Emphasising that ‘Made in India’ products are crucial for achieving ‘Atmanirbhar’ or self-reliant status for the country, he iterated that whether it were chips or ships, they must all be manufactured in India. This will not only reduce India’s dependence on goods and materials manufactured in foreign countries but will also strengthen India’s economy and create enormous amounts of livelihood opportunities. The Prime Minister was inaugurating and laying the foundation stones of several development projects across multiple sectors worth Rs 34,200 crore in Bhavnagar (Gujarat) during the ‘Samudra se Samriddhi’ programme. The ‘Make in India’ initiative, it may be recalled, was launched by the Prime Minister in September 2014 and is a campaign to transform India into a global manufacturing and design hub, foster innovation, build infrastructure, and encourage businesses to manufacture in India to create jobs and drive economic growth. It focuses on several key goals, including facilitating investment, improving ease of doing business, enhancing skill development, and promoting technological advancement across various sectors. It is also important to note that India of the 21st century views the sea as a great opportunity. Incidentally, India pays nearly 75 billion dollars – around six lakh crore rupees – to foreign shipping companies for their services every year. This is almost equal to the country’s current defence budget. Taking this into consideration, it is mind-boggling that the country has spent crores of rupees on other countries over seven decades in this sector alone. Lakhs of jobs have been created in other countries with the money they have earned from India. It is a fact that if earlier governments had invested even a small portion of this money in India’s shipping industry, today the world would have been using Indian ships and maritime facilities, and India would have been earning lakhs of crores in shipping services. It is with this backdrop that India has launched the ‘Samudra se Samriddhi’ programme, with the Prime Minister saying the country must be able to manufacture all kinds of goods, whether it is a chip or a ship. The Prime Minister is right when he said that greater dependence on other countries leads to greater national failure, and this trend has to be arrested. Moreover, reliance on others compromises the self-respect of the nation. While ‘Samudra se Samriddhi’ is only one programme, the key to realisation of the goal is to take ‘Make in India’ on a true mission mode, not just by the government, but also by the people in general and those with entrepreneurial spirit in particular.