The move to boost and regenerate a traditional industry in the country under the AtmaNirbhar Bharat initiative.
Toy hub
As an attempt to encourage the domestic manufacturing of toys, the government has approved eight toy manufacturing clusters at a cost of ₹2,300 crore to boost India’s traditional toys industry, reported Economic Times. These clusters will manufacture toys made of wood, lac, palm leaves, bamboo, and fabric.
This comes after the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s (DPIIT) secretary while announcing the ‘India Toy Fair-2021’ had emphasized creating mega toy and game clusters to create world-class infrastructure and encourage exports. Talking about the need for the effort, he said that Indian market demand for toys is met 85% by imports and Indian manufacturers meet only about 15% of the requirement.
The clusters will come up in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh , and Tamil Nadu. Two toy clusters in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are already under implementation under the Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (Sfurti) scheme. Overall, the Government plans to establish a total of 35 toy clusters across the nation.
The industry came in focus after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his monthly radio broadcast ‘Mann Ki Baat’ had called upon start-up entrepreneurs to ‘team up for toys’ and said it is time to get vocal for local toys. He said that India has the talent and the ability to become a toy hub for the entire world. He said that the global toy industry is over ₹7 lakh crore but India’s share is very small, as he stressed on the need to work to increase it.
The challenges
The Indian toy industry hasn’t been able to keep up with the demand as well as expectations. India’s toy market has been dominated by Chinese toys. Especially for a traditional industry like toy making, it has to keep up with the modernized version of toys i.e., electric toys with sound and light and technology that seems to be the demand for the future.
In an article, The Times of India has quoted Ajay Agarwal, a toy manufacturer and president of the Toy Association of India where he explains the challenges faced by the manufactures. He said that the manufacturers lack equipment to make electric toys as they need to import machines which are expensive with import duty rates. Another toy seller had said that Indian manufacturers don’t make electronic toys and they have to import those from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines.
For the future
The big Make In India push for the domestic toy industry will surely regenerate the traditional industry and create jobs. However, the next step for the industry would have to focus on modernizing the industry as the demand and the expectations would require it to do so. Or else, the country will have to continue importing electric toys, increasing the dependency and therefore failing to meet the need of this initiative.
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