Build a massive factory in the outskirts of a city and you've now got a factory inside the hustle and bustle (and logistical challenges) of a factory in the middle of a city.
Most Indian states have multiple dedicated manufacturing clusters and SEZs for specific industries ranging from the megaclusters like NOIDA and Hosur to smaller ones like Kashipur IIE in Uttarakhand for electronic components or Baddi SEZ in Himachal Pradesh for generic pharma.
The OSAT that is being considered is part of an electronics+automotive SEZ that Micron, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Tata are members of (Sanand SEZ).
Most manufacturing in India has shifted to Tier 2/3/4 towns because of land availability and single-window policies, and in my opinion this is a better strategy as it helps build out regional economies. Heck, my ancestral village has had a wind turbine and battery storage factory for a decade now.
The development of this industrial strategy is underreported in non-Asian media (imo due to a lack of on-the-ground reporting in India), but is starting to be analyzed in the NatSec space [0]. I remember seeing a similar blindness to "Make in China" during it's early years.
[0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/indias-semico...
I was better aware of these types of clusters from Dubais free zones, which I found were marketed in a more understandable way. Cool to learn about Sanand which _seems_ like it has pretty good road access to the ports?
(yes, more on the ground reporting in ANY country would be wonderful for western news to do, but we have to spend all the reporting budget on white house shenanigans now... we're cooked)
Oh whoa. That's pretty wild! What years out of curiosity?
> I thought it was so strange where the Maruti Suzuki plant was - I've seen the trucks sluggishly trying to get around local (residential) traffic as the area around the plant has developed quite a bit, which is where my above anecdote originated
That's because Manesar didn't have an Inland Container Depot (dryports that provide direct rail access to ports) until recently [0] - the Delhi NCR ones were in the eastern (Palwal/Faridabad, Tughlakabad/Delhi, Dadri/Noida) or western side (Bawal/Rewari).
Also, depending on when you were in Gurgaon, Manesar has now basically become part of Gurgaon, with all the farmland in between now becoming China-style high rises. It reminds of how outer-ring Beijing began to transform 15 years ago.
> Cool to learn about Sanand which _seems_ like it has pretty good road access to the ports?
India tends to use rail freight for most exports. A 1 hour cargo truck drive to an ICD and then a 7 hour freight rail to a major terminal port ends up being more efficient than trying to build capacity near a port in a lot of cases in India.
> more on the ground reporting in ANY country would be wonderful for western news to do, but we have to spend all the reporting budget on white house shenanigans now... we're cooked
It's because of the economics of journalism. The GFC and Jihadi John led to margins falling [1] and insurance rising [2], which means most on-the-ground journalism is done by freelancers. But purchasing news from an aggregator like Reuters or Bloomberg gets very pricey very quickly.
At this point, for English-language India news, I'd recommend following Reuters, Bloomberg, or Nikkei Asia simply because they have the right mix of on-the-ground reporters, relationships with policymakers, and journalistic standards. There is a good ecosystem of policy/wonk oriented reporting in India as well (eg. The Print, The Secretariat, Policy Circle) that is similar in style to "The Wire China" but they can be pretty obtuse if you don't have the domain experience.
Outside of these kinds of sources, reporting about much of Asia is easily 3-5 years behind in most "mainstream" American media
> I was better aware of these types of clusters from Dubais free zones, which I found were marketed in a more understandable way
A lot of that was because back when Dubai was building out it's logistics network, it depended on Western capital. Indian manufacturing and logistics FDI opportunties are primarily marketed to Asian (Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and before 2021 Chinese) or Gulf investors, because in most cases "American" companies like Apple or funds like Blackrock let OEMs or SDFs respectively take the lead.
Outside of R&D/Services FDI, India is fairly disconnected from the West, and the recent push in electronics exports to the US is largely thanks to Asian players slowly shifting to India from China+Vietnam during COVID Zero.
[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/incoming/rail-minister-opens-gati-s...
[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-foreign-correspondents-are-...
[2] - https://theconversation.com/with-foreign-bureaus-slashed-fre...
I'll have to keep an eye on Nikkei Asia. NYTimes seemed to have an OK local bureau, but I noticed they seemed to lag on the Sri Lanka story pretty hard, so I'm definitely curious how empowered they are to get close to the stories. I do have a great deal of curiosity for the region, and wish I had better local news org to follow, but the remembering the famous early 2020 "keep it positive" meeting between central gov and news helps keep me grounded and realistic. Al Jazeera seems interested in reporting, and their biases are pretty easy to understand and work around.
You're incredibly knowledgable about all this! Appreciate you taking the time to teach a random guy on HN!
They are completely out of the loop.
Their bureau is small (around 10 people covering all of South Asia), their bureau chief is viewed as an out-of-touch Westerner who was shifted to Delhi after the fall of Kabul, and they have been frozen out (along with the BBC) because the PIB disliked their reporting on the 2019 election, Shaheen Bagh, and the CAA protests.
When Indian Policymakers meet with American stakeholders at events like the US-India Business Conference at Stanford [0] or the India Study Tour [1], NYT reporters or affiliates are not invited but WSJ [2], The Economist [3], FT [4], or Nikkei [5] are given the red carpet.
Since you were in India during 2018-21, you must have watched Season 1 of Paatal Lok - their B-story about media consolidation is eerily close to the truth.
There's a reason India's press freedom rankings aren't the greatest.
[0] - https://www.hoover.org/events/usibc-50th-anniversary-bay-are...
[1] - https://indiafoundation.in/event-reports/india-study-tour-of...
[2] - https://www.wsj.com/news/author/walter-russell-mead
[3] - https://www.economist.com/asia/2025/11/27/meet-the-road-buil...
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/55cd3608-7f2a-485a-be17-37735947d...
[5] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/middle-east-crisis/india-in...