ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the salience of industrial policy in the pre economic liberalization phase and its role in development – a necessary narrative because it sets the context of industrial organization and performance. It explores the comparison between India’s developmental strategy with those that prevailed in the High Performance Asian Economies with a view to ascertain the causes behind India’s lacklustre performance. The chapter examines the unique challenges of doing business in India and the so-called ‘threat’ of large scale disruption of local enterprises. It argues that the success of some well-known business enterprises in India revolve around their ability to adapt their structures to match the dynamics of the institutional context. The contradictions in industrial policies were somewhat offset by India’s technology policies supplanting institutions with the bedrock of capabilities that appear to have rescued Indian industry of late. India’s tightly controlled regulatory framework has had a mixed effect on corporate governance and performance of business enterprises.
