Indian Industrialization (Economics: Volume 1)

The first volume traces the post-Independence evolution of the industrial sector in India by delineating changes in policy regimes, capturing structural shifts, identifying periods of growth and stagnation, and assessing the factors that explain these trends. It highlights the principal contributions in the economic literature that enrich the contemporary understanding of India’s post-Independence industrial history. The volume covers the development of Indian industry prior to and after 1991, when a balance of payments crisis led to a major regime change marked by the dismantling of the interventionist structures that were set up during the immediate post-Independence years. The essays in this volume revisit the evidence and the debates on India’s post-Independence industrialization; critically examine the role of the government, the strategies it adopted, and the effectiveness of implementation; and seek to provide an understanding of why the expectations that India would successfully make the industrial transition have been belied.