I have bashed the US and EU for wasting the decade that they had to restructure their textile industries, regrettably those aren’t the only ones who wasted time. Nitin notes:

Dr Manmohan Singh’s government came to power with a well publicised
commitment to create employment. The textile industry presented one of
the best opportunities India ever had in recent years to create jobs on a massive scale. What was needed though was liberalisation
of the labour laws that served to protect the trade-unionists, at the
expense of workers. The direct result of these laws is that India lacks
the economies of scale to effectively compete against China’s huge
factories.

I was speaking with a trade representative from the German textile machinery manufacturers’ association last week. He noted that India had not only lagged China in investing in the textile industry, it was also well behind neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan for much of the past decade. And that was in terms of net spending, non-adjusted for factors such as population.

It was only three months before the end of the global quota regime that Indian capital investment in the industry began to seriously pick up, he said.

Still, given that there was a decade to prepare, the blame can’t be totally put on Manmohan Singh’s administration. Both the BHP and Congress held office over the period and Indian manufacturers also didn’t do enough to prepare.