There is no specific source to suggest this timeline. India's proportion of skilled labour is simply in synergy with its current income levels. If skills, no India isn't behind What China used to be in late mid 2000s.
Jumped from just 6% in 2015 to 21% to 2018. It'll continue to grow and still was among single largest pools because of sheer numbers. Total population will continue to keep India up the chart with even faster rising numbers.
That is the myth that India media likes to talk about. The reality is opposite. The number of skillful and experienced workers are far from enough. There are generally 3-5 years gap between a graduate student and skilled worker/engineer. In China, they have a relatively better career education system and state-own-companies to train those new graduates from universities or middle schools. The private companies can directly hire those best from this pool. So, in China, in 2000s, the new factories can have at least 50% experienced workers. In India, however, we only had around 15% position filled with full experienced people.
Even though I can't find the number manufacturing workers, but we can get a rough idea from other source:
According this report:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/number-of-workers-grew-4-8-to-12-2-million-in-fy18-asi-data/articleshow/71193817.cms?from=mdr
there was 12.2 millions workers in India factories in 2018.
Between 1995 to 2000, there was 18 million manufacturing employment cut off
(
https://www.piie.com/blogs/china-economic-watch/manufacturing-employment-china
).
Let’s assume 60% of them were workers, then we had 10 millions unemployed and experienced workers waiting for jobs in 2000. This gives you an idea the difference between 2015 India and 2000 China.
Economic complexity index and "experience" you are talking about of most of these countries is too low to make a significant difference. Indian economy draws most revenues for itself from manufacturing of machines/vehicles or softwares etc. against these countries encashing on textile and primary sector only.
This is one example of how Indians misunderstood the movement of this time: India is not competing with one South Eastern Asian countries but ALL. So, Thailand/Malaysia/Indonesia can compete in machines/vehicles, other countries can compete in textile and primary sector. And these textile/primary sector are the keys.
Beyond certain nations of East & Southeast Asia, there is no Asian country except India with significant R&D and share of industrialization of global chains. India still holds spot among largest producers of steel and certain basic gadgets/products outside East Asia.
Another example of mis-calculation of Indians: South Eastern Asians don’t need to compete in these sectors: 1. These sectors don’t offer great employment; 2. They got Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese to provide these products/services at far cheaper price.
As for "another China", attempts from around the globe to localise their chains are a result of closing gap among powerful and weak countries, not China factor specifically. Trend will again reverse as Asian population starts to decline. Further, "another China" has a lot of interpretations. PRC was never considered a reliable country. Nor so many countries are looked upon with such suspicions fearing blatant abuse of misery of other countries. At least India is one of them, holding a far more lenient and soft image than "mighty" PRC.
Sure, India is holding this lenient and soft image for 70 years.
70 years, PRC was miserable country just getting out of a bloody civil war. It was nothing comparing to India. The trend seemed to be favor towards India.
40 years, PRC was poor communist county while India was a poor country as well. The trend was not right for India.
20 years, Indians already believed that the trend would reverse: China would collapse while India would rise.
Now, Indians started to compare herself to South Eastern Asians.
Oh, please forget China. They are just as miserable as 70 years ago. The trend will serve India in the future.