Street level tinkering in the times of 'Make in India'

The paper discusses the future of Delhi’s electronic bazaars in the wake of the ‘Make in India’ (MiI) program. MiI aims to develop a home-grown manufacturing base that, among its many goals, also targets the same popular market sector that the bazaars currently operate in. However, there is virtually no consideration of the role of bazaars and the informal economy within the MiI program. Rather, this initiative, along with similar efforts to render the economy formal and transparent, sees the bazaars with their reliance on cash transactions and their scant respect for intellectual property rights as part of a regressive grey economy. This paper initiates a discussion on what could be the consequences of following the present route of disregarding the informal economy that, in fact, has hosted the most industrious model of production in the country.