ABSTRACT
The defining image of India – as one where the traditional and the modern coexist – has persisted, and perhaps even sharpened, over the past few decades. The formalization of this idea in the economic development literature can be traced back to a classic paper by Arthur Lewis, wherein he used the term ‘duality’ to describe a seemingly anachronistic economic structure observed among several developing countries in which the ‘capitalist’ or ‘modern’ (broadly identified with industry) sector coexisted with the ‘subsistence’ or ‘traditional’ (broadly identified with agriculture) sector (Lewis, 1954). Subsequently the idea of ‘duality’ has been used somewhat loosely as an analytical construct to capture the co-existence of two (or more) widely different production, and associated technological and institutional structures.
