India Trade — Sector & Policy Recommendations

State-level incentive policies layered on top of central PLI, and which states are emerging as real manufacturing hubs, sector by sector — with sourced evidence, not an unsourced list.

Extends the 5-sector FDI framework to 10 with sourced target countries per sector, a Generalized Nash Equilibrium tariff-rate-quota frame applied to India's own AC-compressor import quota, and a dated timeline of official (non-speculative) 2025-2026 tariff actions.

Tests whether a third of India's FDI landing in Maharashtra is portfolio money or real projects. Portfolio flows are definitionally excluded (RBI's 10% rule) — the real distortion is that DPIIT attributes inflow to the recipient company's registered office, not the project site, and publishes no caveat saying so. Includes the finding that FDI equity counts pure share purchases, with no greenfield/brownfield split published anywhere.

Tests real DPIIT/RBI FDI equity inflow against each PLI scheme's launch date, cross-checked against IBEF's FDI benchmark page. Mixed result, plus a proven registered-office data-quality problem in India's own state-wise FDI statistics.

Every bulletin in this repo condensed into one table across the 10 priority sectors, with a growing / needs-incentives / lagging traffic light and the reasoning stated for every row.

Benchmarks India's two-tier cost of capital (RBI repo, bank MCLR/EBLR, AAA bonds) against 9 target countries' policy rates, cross-checked against ICRA sector-risk notes — including a caught-and-retracted research fabrication, documented rather than hidden.

Direct ministry-website verification of all 14 PLI schemes' utilization, incentives, and application status — plus an honest test of whether DPIIT's IEM data or MoSPI's mega-project monitoring can track private investment by state (they can't).

All 10 verdicts re-run on FY2025-26 FDI (both former greens fell; Pharma took the green slot), with growth-vs-volume trade analysis and six action items to further reduce the trade deficit.

Letter-grades the government's own incentive payouts (₹28,748cr = ~15% of outlay; Pharma A to ACC Battery F), the IEM approval record, and PIB-credited producing companies per scheme — every claim with its PRID.

Ranks states on implemented industrial investment 2021-2025 (top 3 = 63.3%), quantifies the IEM-vs-FDI divergence per state (Odisha #2 with 0.14% of FDI), and identifies sector leaders — Metallurgical #1, Chemicals #2 with no PLI at all.

The repo's architecture documented: the seven-gate investment-lifecycle measurement schema (with each source's blind spot), the 14-source data inventory with access methods, and the seven-step working method.

Eight steps from "which schemes apply" to incentive claims: NSWS spine (KYA → single window → gateways), per-scheme portals and PMA contacts, the seven statutory gates, calibrated claim expectations, and the dated triggers on the calendar.

Six agents swept 16 ministries' sites, CMS APIs and portals + NSWS: ~100 policies with live application windows, verified closures, and per-ministry site health — including the headless-CMS discovery and the dead-domain findings.

Every tracked scheme's launch (with Cabinet PRID), incentive window, officially-reported applicant counts, and the closure record: LSEM tenure closed → MPMS, Drones expired with no successor, ACC stalled with a vanished awardee, Steel's 14-of-58 withdrawal.

19,795 companies across 107 countries mapped coverage-first to the 12 incentivized sectors: global pool → India's pool → the incentive lane per sector, plus PRID-verified foreign-investor ↔ initiative pairings. Full catalog in the companion repo.

Launch-to-outcome traces inside the 122k-release PIB register: 8 closed-success / 8 partial / 2 laggards — every success ran on a demand-side guarantee or procurement design; the honest instrument-to-loop timescale is ~8–10 years.

93 Cabinet-register launches classified by five parallel agents over the 83,734-release PIB index: new PLI schemes 11 → 1 → 1 → 0 → 2 → 0; even at the 2021 peak production-linked was 11.2% of new money; payouts migrated output → design → employment (ELI ₹99,446cr).

Full sweep of the 2026 Cabinet register from the repo's PIB index: ~₹1.9 lakh cr of new commitments that de-risk inputs instead of paying for output — and three of the four flagged import gaps (fuels, fertilisers, cotton, pulses) got instruments this year. Plastics & chemicals remain uncovered.

The operating architecture behind the quarterly refresh: 14-source ingestion, immutable dated snapshots, per-gate change-data-capture deltas (not full re-scans), a Lambda speed layer for mid-quarter events, the seven-step regeneration pipeline, and the failure-mode runbook.

Full national EC register via PARIVESH's open API (113,804 proposals): state pipeline depth, sector loading, flagship-project clearance status — including two negative findings (POSCO-JSW JV and RRPCL absent entirely).

12-chapter import ranking vs. a six-month roundup of PIB-reported government schemes.

FY2025-26 bilateral trade balance by partner country, with a decade of policy history behind the five biggest deficits.

12 fastest-growing import chapters mapped to top supplier countries, cross-sector country-priority ranking, and PLI coverage check.

The export-side mirror: 12 growth export chapters mapped to top destination countries and PLI coverage.