Priyank Kharge, Karnataka IT Minister, believes the southern State will emerge to lead India’s budding semiconductor industry even as other States such as Gujarat are competing for investments from global players. Speaking to businessline on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, Kharge spoke about his plans to boost electronics manufacturing in Karnataka.
What are you doing to attract investments for a semicon fab to Karnataka?
We are very serious and aggressive about semicon. We have identified semiconductor clusters in four places in the State. We were the first ones to bring the Apple assembly line 4-5 years ago. Now, this is leading to a cascading effect and trying to bring the entire supply chain manufacturing here. We have, not just tied up with Foxconn, we have other players that we are talking to, who have signed an MoU with us. In Bengaluru, we have Marvel. Semincon and electronics manufacturing will be given a greater thrust by our government this time, and I am sure in the next couple of years we will be the number one electronics manufacturer State in the country.
Do you have any expectation that Karnataka will be hosting a fab in the next 2-3 years?
We already have a fabless ecosystem, and we are slowly metamorphosing into a fab ecosystem. A lot of people are talking to us. Earlier the talks were more speculative, and now there is a sense of urgency. It has come down to that. People are moving out of China. And the best possible hub for it will be Karnataka, not only for the policies, but we have a huge human resource bank. We not only have chip designing professionals, but public and private institutions such as ITI, and skilling programmes with respect to semicon. Karnataka government is thinking holistically to ensure that we will be leading India’s semicon manufacturing.
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Have you spoken to other big global companies such as Asus, Acer for manufacturing laptops in Karnataka?
We are speaking to them, because most of them have R&D, every manufacturer’s research and development happens in Bengaluru; we are in talks with them, and we will ensure that they are [manufacturing] here sooner than later.
Will Tesla be setting up manufacturing facilities in Karnataka soon?
They are heavily affected by import duties, and the Central government needs to be more serious if it wants to have a ‘Make in India’ programme. You just cannot have high import duties on components and other things and say we will make in India. We need to get the skillsets, we need to get the ecosystem in place before this works out. We can’t just randomly get up and say we will ban import of laptops. Tesla is coming with these high import duties. Where is the technical know-how? There are thousands of components that go into the manufacture of Apple phones, hundreds of things to make a Tesla car — you need the precision, the mechanism. What about the supply chain? If the government of India intends to propel Make in India to the next level, they seriously need to rethink their strategy. How did we get here? We started with services, now we are doing research and innovation; it took us 30 years. It does not happen overnight.
The best thing for us to do is not for the government to clear these things, and start making the manufacturing ecosystem locally. Manufacturing ecosystem and innovation ecosystem for products. In fact we are thinking of launching a centre for excellence for manufacturing. We are speaking to SMEs and MSMEs
With Tata’s acquisition of Wistron’s iPhone facilities, has Wistron completely left Karnataka. What is the status on their EV business?
For EV, they are looking at it;, they are looking for some course correction.
Karnataka also wants to set up a fact check unit, how do you reconcile this with the opposition of the Central government’s proposed fact check unit?
The Central government is amending the IT Act so that they can control the narrative. Tell you what to do, or not to do. While we are merely trying to say that a news that is in public domain is true or false. We are just trying to manage misinformation, malinformation or fake news. We are not trying to tell you what to do. If you are going to tell, Priyank Kharge is the worst IT Minister in the history of Karnataka, the government is not going to get involved with that. If you write a fake news about what the government is doing, then it will be flagged and will be a public participatory think, we will be using fact checkers of repute and we will put it in public domain. The fact checking will be done by a public and private participatory body.By composition, it will have people from the civil society, tech companies, legal luminaries and people from the government. It will not be the Congress IT cell sitting in it.
Published on September 6, 2023
