The Political Economy of Industrial Growth in India

Abstract

The deceleration of industrial growth in India since the mid-sixties has opened up a debate over industrial policy as the new government of Rajiv Gandhi has attempted to replace many bureaucratic controls by market processes. A central issue is whether the deceleration is due primarily to inadequate investment in key sectors of the economy (a point on which there is considerable agreement) or whether resources have also been inefficiently employed. State controls put in place by antibureaucratic and anticapitalist socialists created interests within the bureaucracy, the governing Congress Party, and the business community, which sustain an industrial structure that the present government, its new orientation notwithstanding, will find difficult to dismantle.