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A billion for every chip-maker who 'makes in India,' sources say
- runawaybottle 6y agoIndia has previously tried to woo semiconductor players but firms were deterred by India's wobbly infrastructure, unstable power supply, bureaucracy and poor planning. India must have one world class city, right? If they want to compete with China, they need to kind of do something China is willing to do. Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning.
- perryizgr8 6y ago> Tear down an existing city This is practically impossible in a democracy like India. Tearing down a city and rebuilding it will take longer than the term of any elected representative/official. The displaced people will vote him out before the plan comes to fruition. The only way forward for us is to do things gradually. Every step must preserve citizens' liberty and rights, and remove government regulations so the people can create wealth.
- runawaybottle 6y agoIf we had to play this thought experiment out, what cities could be rebuilt incrementally (half of it first)? Obviously the major ones would not be a good candidate. There must be one. If infrastructure is the problem then you must at some point face the music and pay the infrastructure debt. Otherwise you are basically not serious about moving forward. If one city gets rebuilt and becomes an economic magnet, then that should provide enough political/social capital to roll out more new cities.
- klyrs 6y agoLet's do LA first, it's atrociously inefficient
- imtringued 6y agoThe ones in power like it that way. With India at least you have the pretense that it is a developing country.
- perryizgr8 6y ago> There must be one. I think tier 2 cities like Pune and Bangalore are good candidates. They are both expanding like crazy. It will be easy (not really, but easier) to build out the new developments with next-gen infrastructure. Once the new areas are built up and show their superiority over a few years, the older ones will be upgraded due to public pressure.
- kamaal 6y agoAs some one born and raised in Bangalore, These kind of projections have been done for long. They don't happen, and there's lots of reasons for that. For starters I honestly believe to have genuine upgrade of infrastructure and living standards, you need to increase people's income levels. While there's steady upwards income mobility in Bangalore, it's still no where near to cause leap frog progress. The remainder of reasons go beyond the scope of discussion of a small HN comment. They have lots to do with insane levels of corruption, and socio-economic attitudes of people. Enough money already exists, is sanctioned and spent to leap frog infrastructure to DisneyLand levels. But nearly negligible actually gets spent, needless to say the dishonesty in quality of work done. Beyond this we just need to acknowledge nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone. The other part just continues. Bangalore is not even a city, its really more like a mix of at-least 4 districts, gradually absorbed in to the original 'Bangalore' city. People will keep coming into the city, and jobs keep arriving. Since the already dismal state of spending, and progress. No new cities can be built in other places, so people continue to arrive. Real estate prices go up, there is no where near Sanitation infrastructure, or Electricity or even roads. But investors keep buying out lands a decade in advance. And people with no discipline or inclination to play this game just have to pay up high rents or pay 2 - 5 times the cost of a home. All this for access to schools, hospitals, career etc.
- perryizgr8 6y ago> nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone I agree with most of your comment, but I refuse to believe this is true. Almost everyone I have personally met in the city (from the auto drivers to shopkeepers to policemen to businessmen) was well-meaning and well-behaved, with an intelligent, nuanced outlook and understanding of common problems we all face. The problems in our society are systemic, not because "people are bad". People are (in general) good and law abiding. For example, a common conundrum I've heard about is that in any restaurant that serves alcohol, the customs/excise dept requires there to be only one exit/entry. However, fire safety code calls for multiple exits. So what is the restaurant owner to do?? He has to bribe the safety inspector, or the customs inspector, or more commonly both. The owner is not a bad, corrupt person. The inspectors are not bad, corrupt persons. The people who drafted the various codes did not draft them with an aim to encourage corruption. But combined together, all this causes the problems we see.
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- cocoland2 6y agoIndia is not an Autocracy where a few million can be automagically teleported to another city where the PB has decided to build a factory. Do not think this is something that will happen in a few thousand years in India , for starters many consider a place of residence to be sacred and passed on from generations (slowly changing) and would never allow something like this to happen
- vmception 6y agoMy only rebuttal to this, and I don't know much about it and am only an outside observer from America, is that India has amended its constitution 104 times since 1951. So from my perspective, anything can happen. Obviously if certain topics just don't have consensus due to the culture, then it won't, but that's my observation.
- indianpers 6y agoI seriously doubt that .. Land and house are "sacred" in India .. It is next to Gods in a way .. People worship their houses , to bring such a change is near to impossible
- cocoland2 6y agoSure thing , can happen (from federal or state). We had a communist reform in my state where implementation of the land act transferred land rights to the tillers in the 50's. So it is possible with an act of parliament or state law. Is that going to be simple to enact such a thing , absolutely doubt it.
- occamschainsaw 6y agoSlightly off the topic, but from my limited knowledge, I think that amending the constitution is not as big a deal in parliamentary democracies as it is in the US. The UK doesn’t even have a codified constitution[1]. These living constitutions are much more flexible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
- blueblisters 6y ago
- paxys 6y agoWhy do you need to tear down a city to build another one? There are already numerous special economic zones across the country (especially at/near ports) that have seen great success when it comes to more traditional manufacturing. The problem with semiconductors is they need very specialized equipment, talent, materials and overall infrastructure that is just not available in India. So "unstable power supply" is a very simplified (and incorrect) argument.
- runawaybottle 6y agoBecause I doubt the semiconductor industry is the only industry complaining about this. Tourism? How about the actual citizens? Shipping and transportation? Talent in software that just want nothing more than to leave the country when they get a chance? Rebuilding is important because the major population centers have already been defined. Otherwise you’d need an exodus every time a new city is built.
- paxys 6y agoWhat does any of that have to do with semiconductor manufacturing? You can have the best tourism, quality of life and everything else, and still not be able to build stuff domestically. Look at the USA, for example.
- imtringued 6y agoThe USA is the victim of having a reserve currency though. It's simply not economically viable to export products from a nation when every other nation wants to dump their products into that nation.
- markdown 6y ago> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Can you imagine tearing down Detroit and rebuilding it from scratch? What about Seattle? Impossible, isn't it? India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen.
- erklik 6y ago> India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen. Not according to these folks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index USA is 25, India is 53.
- markdown 6y agoLook at their methodology. They don't take into account the role of money in politics. Bribery of govt officials and politicians is legal in the US (they call it lobbying) so only the rich get to control politicians and their policies. Further, massive media conglomerates controlled by billionaires have an outsized influence on govt policy. As such, while the US has the veneer of being democratic, it really isn't. And I haven't even gotten into gerrymandering, which makes a complete mockery of democracy.
- triceratops 6y agoWhat makes you think bribes don't exist in India? They have lobbying too, and illegal bribes are also all too common.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
- rossng 6y agoHistory has shown us that mass rebuilding of cities is a terrible idea. Strong cities develop organically. Slow evolution of the built environment has a kind of 'antifragile' nature. It prevents you from accidentally doing too much of the wrong thing at the same time, and ensures you are building things that people actually want. Just look at some of the awful mistakes made by planners in the 20th century. * Entire neighbourhoods were bulldozed in many American cities to make way for huge road infrastructure projects. These projects mainly displaced socioeconomically disadvantaged people and ethnic minorities, with enormous and long-lasting impacts. Decades later, it is broadly acknowledged that massive road infrastructure is toxic to cities. It causes pollution, is enormously expensive to maintain and destroys the character of a city. * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. * We covered the countryside in endless sprawl. Houses were built around the idea that everyone must own a car and drive everywhere. Communities are too sparse to support natural urban life - shops, cafes, community spaces and so on. Real, ecologically diverse nature was razed in favour of an endless grassy monoculture. I believe we should have some humility and stop trying to revolutionise the world's cities, thinking that we know best. Instead, we should stick to improvements that we know definitely work. Transit-oriented development. Dense, walkable neighbourhoods. Quality green space for all. Elimination of private cars from city centres. Reliable electricity and clean water. District heating. Sustainable urban drainage. Strong environmental protection for bodies of water. And so on.
- baybal2 6y ago> * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. I'd say it worked well, and is not anything "unsustainable." Tell how exactly it is "wrong"
- triceratops 6y ago> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Lol what? We warn against big-bang software rewrites because shit always goes wrong. But you're confident rebuilding a city perfectly is no big deal?
- HenryKissinger 6y ago> India is offering more than $1 billion in cash to each semiconductor company that sets up manufacturing units in the country as it seeks to build on its smartphone assembly industry and strengthen its electronics supply chain, two officials said. Semiconductors are the new food. Everyone wants to make them themselves. No one wants to depend on foreign fabs anymore. But I'm afraid that at some point we will run out of raw metals to mine, including rare earths. There is already a shortage of lithium because of electric vehicles. Could the mass manufacturing of semiconductors squeeze global metal supplies even more? Iron, gold, cadmium, silver, platinum, titanium, these resources are finite and not renewable. Even if we run out in 10,000 years, what happens then? We need to recycle more of our old electronics, including computer chips and processors. A brilliant mind should come up with an industrial process that takes a few thousand chips and breaks them down into separate components. Turning manufactured electronics back into raw metals (except plastics, paint, and glue, which should be discarded).
- nightski 6y agoHopefully space mining is a thing in 10,000 years?
- HenryKissinger 6y agoHopefully. Are asteroids known to contain rare earths?
- iancmceachern 6y agohttps://space.mines.edu/ https://space.mines.edu/
- willcipriano 6y agoHopefully in 10,000 years space mining will be a relic of the distant past, like the black and white photos of Appalachian coal miners in history books, and we will have moved on to creating the materials we need by adding or removing electrons and protons from other more common materials.
- 6y ago
- vgchh 6y agoIndia has a chance this time. Govt seems committed to “start” the leap frogging process. For example there is new energy around building infrastructure, especially expressways. Also China’s recent actions are also a wake up call and acting as the fuel in the fire for India to get its own house in order.
- ramraj07 6y agoOnly if the Modi government isn’t capped it’s going to be no different than the Chinese system. Possibly worse: the facism and genocide with none of the efficiency benefits!
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Possibly worse: the facism and genocide with none of the efficiency benefits Once you get the fascism down, the propaganda that creates the illusion of efficiency will be there, too. They kinda go hand-in-armored-gauntlet.
- dang 6y agoPlease do not take HN threads further into political or partisan flamewar. It leads deeper into hell and we're trying to go the other way here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- blackrock 6y agoMaybe their chips can be powered with special cow dung! ARM DUNG PRO x85.9
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting abusively and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dirtyid 6y agoThe real obstacle IMO are semi capable countries are loath to share capability due to geopolitics. US can entice and coerce TSMC / Samsung for fabs by having IP controls and massive market for IC demand. Even EU is failing to court TSMC because they constitute only 5% of TSMC customers. 1B + Indian poor infra just isn't enticing, even less so when access to IC = geopolitical power / control. India has too long history of non-alignment and indigenous spirit to be gifted IC autonomy by those able.
- JulianRaphael 6y agoGreat comment! You hit the nail on the head with regards to India's geopolitical standing, which is often forgotten when discussing these incentives. In order to come up with really enticing incentives, you need to have deep understanding of what guides technology companies in their decision making AND deep understanding of the geopolitics of IC. There are relatively few people in Indian politics who have this kind of knowledge. What do you think the Indian government would have to offer the international IC community to actually attract chip-makers?
- dirtyid 6y agoHonestly, not much currently. QUAD unproven, India still wants Russian S400 despite CAATSA, dependence on sourcing from Russian MIC for decades to come, working relations with Iran. That's just some medium-term geopolitical positions against India. India will have problems getting leading edge for same reasons as China. Ultimately, India is too big to ever be junior partner and be subsumed under US controlled semi. Even if India had Chinese market capacity to absorb 300B of semi imports per year, they'd still have problems getting IC deals because at that point, a rich developed India that controls Indian Ocean is much scarier than rich China that controls SCS. IMO India should hope Chinese semi efforts + EU/SK/JP attempts to spin off de-americanized supply chain succeeds - more semi tech spreads, more access to tech via political leveraging between blocs, better chance for indigenous Indian efforts. In the mean time focus on other achievable choke points like wafers, gas production, photo resist and insinuate itself into current global supply chain. Flex it's China-balance position and try to coerce modest 28nm fab for Indian MIC and slowly build from there. Realize it took SK/TW/US 40 years to build up capabilities. China will be lucky to do it in 30. No short cuts. The elephant in the room is obviously just getting country infra / business environment in order. IMO leading industries are whole of society problems. A country with $2000 per capita and heavy brain drain needs to solve the basics first.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoFor someone who have to fear for his life facing Indian "biggest democracy" farce, I say this is crap. India has the ambani/adani who literally own govt/public property today. They run the show. Wonder why they Havent started already? As someone who has to see the bureaucracy up close with its ingrained corruption, I say this is not possible. The taxes, the licenses, the mood of the people, the attitude of govt is just not proper.
- brainless 6y agoYet I, as an Indian and having been part of the startup ecosystem for more than a decade, have seen change. Change takes time. I remember days when we used to host events and had to call up participants and offer them free food so they would come. And now Indian software is producing some fantastic global products. Things take time.
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- haltingproblem 6y agoMuslim Kashimiris lost all moral ground to claim biggest democracy farce when they cleansed 400,000 Hindu Pandits from the kashmir valley with threats of "leave, convert or die" and leave the women behind, if you leave [1]. This is what ISIS did to the Yazidis except it happened in 1990 and no one, including the Indian state, did anything about it. Today when you lose 4G access the Indian state can point to the Islamist driven genocide and claim they are preventing another Islamist genocide. The choice for other Indians is would you have an Islamist state which is 100% purely Sunni Muslim with 4G Internet or one with a restive population with lesser freedoms but gives some semblance human rights to the 10-20% minority that is not Sunni Muslim but rather Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Shia and would get driven out, raped or just killed the moment the Indian state pulls back. As to Ambani/Adani clique, the very jibe is farcical. There are dozens of billionaries minted in the past decade since Modi came to power. 90% of Adani's $55B wealth was added in the last 12 months on the stock market through publicly listed entities. As to Ambani, I do wish he owned the country. Imagine if he could do to every service what he did to Internet data and voice calling - the cheapest rates in the world and near universal coverage. Heck, every country wishes he could own their telecom infrastructure lock, stock and barrel. [1] http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/kashmiri-pandits-offered-three-choices-by-radical-islamists/ http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/kashmiri-pandits-off...
- ARandomerDude 6y agoSomeone in India said they'd give you a billion dollars if you just give them...nope. I'm out. Seen this one one YouTube too many times already.
- MangoCoffee 6y agoi find it funny that India's EOI for Chinese language is in traditional Chinese. https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/EoI_Semiconductor_FAB_dated_15.12.2020_Chinese.pdf https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/EoI_Semiconduct...
- known 6y agoNot possible https://www.quora.com/Why-can-India-not-become-a-superpower https://www.quora.com/Why-can-India-not-become-a-superpower