supporting them in becoming competitive in an era of increasing globalization and deregulation.
Among the successful emerging economies in the world, India occupies a prominent place as a major center for computer software production and exports. Indeed, the emergence of India since the early 1990s as a major country producing and exporting software is a remarkable success story of economic development. However, within the country, the growth in this industry has been concentrated mainly in the southern and the western parts. Regional growth of this industry has been driven by the policies of regional governments, especially after the early 1990s when the central government initiated wide-ranging economic and policy reforms. These reforms resulted in market-oriented changes in trade and foreign exchange policies and led to the abolition of central government controls on investment and industrial location decisions, allowing more freedom to the states in formulating their own development policies.
This book examines 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 lagged behind. In this book, the author focuses on the role of the regional (state) governments in promoting these industries within their regions. The approach longitudinally examines the systematic linkages between the state policies and the growth of this industry in these states within a comparative framework.
The author presents a coherent analytical framework to explain the success of these states in establishing a technologically sophisticated industry within a relatively short span of less than 2 decades. Their success is mainly explained in terms