India's Industrial Policy: A Reassessment brings together insights from essays written over a few decades, and traces the rudimentary evolution of an industrial policy in erstwhile Madras Presidency. The book examines specific aspects of the growth and development of industry in the region as well as the factors integral to this progress. This includes human resource development in terms of education and skill enhancement, including the role played by gender in such growth. The bringing together of historical and contemporary writings emphasizes in no uncertain terms the lack of coherence in current policies, which contain disparate components put together to constitute an industrial policy. Historically, the provincial government struggled but made attempts, for instance, to forge a link between education and employment, involving also the artisan classes. In post-Independence India, this disjuncture has not just widened; the material base to absorb the products of higher education has not simultaneously expanded. In the face of India's continued anxiety to be globally relevant in the economic field, the chapters here emphasize the necessity of an industrial policy that directly addresses the theme of how to improve state capacity to coordinate investment and prioritize activities on which resources are to be expended.