India’s Critical Manufacturing Dependencies

India does not have an import problem; it has an industrial-capability problem disguised as one. This inaugural edition treats the customs ledger as a diagnostic signal, identifying, scoring and decomposing 312 strategic opportunity surfaces across twelve mega-sectors on the proprietary Critical Manufacturing Dependency Index and nine companion indices. India’s manufacturing value added is about $470 billion — 2.9% of the global total — while roughly $506 billion of its $672 billion merchandise imports are strategic. Two imperatives govern the response: localise the single-source chokepoints before the volume (a $400 million EUV-photoresist import is more urgent than a $4 billion commodity), and descend the industrial stack from final assembly toward components, materials, machinery and test-and-certification. The report concentrates capital on twelve executable opportunity zones — from semiconductors in Dholera to Li-ion cells in the Chennai corridor — within a roughly $480 billion, largely private, phased localisation envelope over 2026–2035, set against $5.6 trillion of strategic imports if nothing changes. Thirteen chapters, 46 tables, 30 figures, the underlying CMDD database and full appendices.