New Delhi, July 12 -- At the end of last week, the Indian tech industry's most prominent poster child-the humble smartphone-saw much conjecture. Driven by a newsbreak on a certain company sending their Chinese specialists back to their homeland from India, multiple projections of doom and gloom rose to the fore. As word got clearer, the biggest question that rose out of Foxconn's mini exodus was: can India's smartphone-driven electronics economy really, actually survive without China?

This week, Mint's reportage underlined that while survival isn't under threat, the big factor that's come under fire is growth. And growth-for the sake of our big, bold aatmanirbhar dreams-is non-negotiable at the moment. A stream of experts that we spoke w...