Informal Industries and Economic Development : Indian Experience at a Comparative Perspective with the East Asian Countries

We aim to understand the key factors that explain the growth of a competitive and dynamic informal industrial sector in the major East Asian countries by looking at the historical developmental context as well as the industrial policy adopted by these countries. The paper also compares the characteristics of the informal industries in India with that of the East Asian countries and includes that the contrasting nature of the informal industrial units of these two sets of countries is essentially embedded in the differences in labour market regulation, approaches to financial market liberalization and the overall strategy of industrialization