Second, it focuses sharply on the role of the state in the rapid advancement of developing economies in high-technology industries within an overall neoliberal policy regime, an aspect that does not find much support in the current literature.
The growth of this industry in India becomes more puzzling when we consider the regional variations in its growth. The development of this industry within the country has been quite uneven geographically, concentrated mainly in the southern and the western regions. Regional or state governments have taken the lead in driving the growth of this industry within their states after the reforms in the early 1990s. In this book, I examine the development strategies pursued by three states in southern India for the development of this industry within an overall neoliberal policy framework of the central government. Two of these states (Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh) have been highly successful in attracting software firms since the mid-1990s, while the third state (Kerala) has achieved considerable success during the current decade after lagging behind during the 1990s. The focus here is on the role of the regional governments in promoting these industries within their regions. The approach that I adopt is to examine the systematic linkages between these state policies and the growth of this industry in these states within a comparative framework.
I argue that the success of these states in establishing a technologically sophisticated industry within a relatively short period is based on four critical factors: availability of adequate skilled labor and specialized infrastructure, proemployer labor and policy reforms, ethnic linkages of immigrant professionals abroad who returned to establish firms in their native states, and their existing technological capabilities at the beginning of reforms. These states exploited the emerging opportunities in a liberalizing economy and took proactive steps to attract