India’s Technological Capacity: Effects of Trade, Industrial, Science and Technology Policies

In some recent research I have conducted on exports of technology by developing countries, I have argued that India’s performance suggests that it has the broadest and best-developed technological capabilities in the Third World.2 This presents a paradox: India combines an impressive performance in exporting its technology with a poor one in terms of industrial growth, the expansion of manufactured exports, the absorption of industrial labour, and the introduction of genuinely innovative products in domestic or foreign markets. Could it be that the same set of policies which have held back growth in general have simultaneously prompted the development and export of indigenous technology? Are the two completely unrelated? Or is there a mixture — have some of the restrictive policies promoted technological growth while others have prevented the exploitation of the resulting capabilities in terms of industrial and export growth?