In March 2018, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry released the draft Indian National Strategy for Standardisation of products and services to provide level playing field to domestic industry and so that best global practices may be adopted.
The strategy takes into consideration the current state of development across sectors, the existing quality of infrastructure and the policy directions regarding domestic economic developments and trade in goods and services.
The salient features of the draft strategy are as follows.
• Key drivers of economic activities relating to goods and services are the positioning standards.
* For effective management, integrated infrastructure, roadmaps and institutions should be created.
• In domestic and international markets, competitiveness of Indian goods and services should be enhanced.
• A comprehensive ecosystem should be created for standards development talking into account diversity of interests and expertise available.
• A level playing field should be provided to domestic industry and best practices adopted in areas relating to standardisation, conformity assessment and technical regulations.
In the wake of rapid growth of the Indian economy, a mature standards ecosystem becomes relevant. Thus, the establishment of a robust ‘Quality Infrastructure’ in India with a harmonised, dynamic and mature standards ecosystem becomes necessary. This strategy has the potential to spur economic growth along with lending more appeal to the ‘Made in India’ label. Countries the world over are evolving and adopting strategies to synergise standardisation work with technological, social and economic development.