FDI, MSMEs, Digitalization, and Green Industrialization: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Lessons for India

This book presents fresh research on how Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), patterns of clustering, digitalization and innovation policies, interact and influence India’s industrialisation and its greening or sustainability. As India seeks to accelerate its process of industrialization especially focusing on the manufacturing sector, different interactions between agents of industrialization need to be understood better through evidence-based research.  The volume through its 17 original contributions, focuses on three broad interrelated themes: FDI, export performance, innovation and environmental sustainability; growth, competitiveness and spatial distribution of MSMEs concerning access to finance, digitalisation and sustainability; and, green technology, circular economy and challenges towards clean transition and green industrialization.  Research presented in this book does not see industrialization as an isolated process from globalization and appreciates the need to act upon specific impacts of foreign trade and investments. With a focused and futuristic approach towards industrialisation in India, it provides rigorous evidence-based treatment of complex interactions using secondary and primary sources of data deploying appropriate analytical techniques. In light of empirical findings, each chapter comes up with policy lessons for industrial strategy.

Shedding new light and evidence, this book makes an important contribution by helping to generate a better understanding of the process of green industrialization and how it can be fostered to create inclusive and sustainable prosperity. It will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, analysts, researchers and students of industrial and environmental economics.

Nagesh Kumar is Director of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), New Delhi, India. Prior to taking up this role in May 2021, Professor Kumar served for 12 years as Director at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), Bangkok. During 2002-09, Nagesh served as the Director-General of the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a policy think-tank of the Government of India. During 1993-98, Nagesh served on the faculty of the United Nations University-MERIT (then UNU/INTECH) in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Boston University Global Development Policy Centre. Nagesh has also served on the boards of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of India, the International Centre for Trade & Sustainable Development (ICTSD), Geneva; the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS), Kathmandu. He has published 18 books and over 120 peer-reviewed papers covering themes in industrialization, FDI, innovation, trade, and sustainable development. A PhD from the Delhi School of Economics, Nagesh received the Exim Bank's first International Trade Research Award in 1990, and the Global Development Network (GDN) Research Medal in 2000. 

Satyaki Roy works as Associate Professor at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), New Delhi, India. His initial research focuses on industrial clusters in India and the nature of spatial concentration of production in the context of late industrialization.  Satyaki has worked and published extensively on diverse issues related to labour and employment, structural change in India and the emerging trends in manufacturing sector and political economy of informality. His current areas of interest include industrialization in India, labour intensive sectors, global production network and its implication on industrial growth in developing countries. Satyaki's books include 'Small and Medium Enterprises in India: Infirmities and Asymmetries in Industrial Clusters' (2013) and 'Contours of Value Capture: India’s Neoliberal Path of Industrial Development' (2020).