Twelve years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi planted the lion-emblem flag of Make in India on the global stage, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has marked the anniversary with a salute to what he calls a 'transformative journey' — one that he says has moved Indian manufacturing from the margins to the mainstream of the world economy.

Posting on 25 September 2026 — the programme's twelfth anniversary — CM Yogi wrote in Hindi that under Modi's 'glorious leadership,' Make in India has given 'innovation an opportunity, investment a trust, and manufacturing a new strength.' He used the phrase Local to Global and the mantra Make in India — Make for the World to describe how homegrown products have been plugged into international markets, lifting what he called India's 'industrial self-confidence to a new height.'

A programme born on 25 September 2014

Make in India was launched by Prime Minister Modi on 25 September 2014 with a single, concrete ambition: raise manufacturing's share of India's GDP and attract both domestic and foreign capital into production. The programme targeted over two dozen sectors — from defence and aerospace to textiles and food processing — and set up a single-window investment facilitation system to cut through bureaucratic friction. The lion made of interlocking cogs became one of modern India's most recognisable policy symbols.

In May 2020, the framework was reinforced by the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-Reliant India Mission), announced in the wake of pandemic-era supply-chain shocks. That campaign deepened the Make in India logic — less reliance on imports, stronger indigenous production, faster integration into global value chains. CM Yogi's post explicitly ties the two, describing Atmanirbhar Bharat's strength as the engine carrying India toward the goal of Viksit Bharat — a Developed India.

UP's alignment with the national manufacturing push

For Uttar Pradesh — India's most populous state and one of its largest economies — the Make in India decade has coincided with an aggressive state-level push for industrial investment. Under CM Yogi, the state has hosted back-to-back investors' summits and positioned itself as a preferred destination for manufacturing, logistics, and defence-corridor projects. The ideological alignment between Lucknow and New Delhi on industrial policy has been consistent and deliberate.

The broader pattern is unmistakable: since 2014, Indian economic policy has steadily repositioned the country from a predominantly services-led economy toward one where manufacturing, exports, and global value-chain participation are front and centre. Make in India sits at the heart of that repositioning, with Atmanirbhar Bharat adding the self-reliance dimension after the pandemic exposed the risks of import dependency.

Twelve years in, the anniversary is less a finish line than a staging post. The real test — whether India's manufacturing GDP share and FDI inflows have shifted structurally — will show up in the data that follows. But on the political calendar, 25 September is now firmly a day when the ruling establishment renews its manufacturing vow in public. CM Yogi's post is the loudest such renewal from a state capital today.