IX. Industrialisation in India and Indonesia

Abstract

About ten years ago Deepak Nayyar, an Indian economist, lamented on the sluggishness of industrial growth in India, which at the time had persisted for more than ten years, since the rate of industrial growth dropped sharply from an average annual rate of 7.7% during the period 1951–1965 to an average rate of only 3.6% during the decade 1965–1975. Seven years later, at a conference on industrialisation in East and Southeast Asia held at the Australian National University, Canberra, Professor Deepak Lai, a distinguished Indian economist teaching at University College, London, and a consultant to the World Bank, expressed a similar disappointment, describing the absolute level of industrialisation in India as well its contribution to per capita growth as disappointing, even dismal compared with the rapid industrial growth of the four East Asian newly-industrialising countries (NICs), namely South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.