Exports of Technology by India: Recent Evidence

Abstract

This chapter is based mainly upon the findings of a trip undertaken with World Bank support, during December 1979 and January 1980, to ‘map out’ the broad dimensions of technology exports (TE) by India, but it includes some more recent data on TE which have become available in late 1981. It extends and provides further empirical underpinning to the author’s earlier monograph (published as Lall, 1982b) on developing countries as exporters of technology. The trip was intended to be the first phase of a longer-term study of the acquisition of technological capability by developing countries. This paper does not, therefore, attempt to arrive at firm conclusions about the nature of the technological development which underlies technology exports; it does, however, report on some impressions gathered during the field trip on the technological basis of overseas activity.

I am grateful to Rajiv Kumar and Ritu Kumar for their assistance in collecting and processing the data, and to Alice Amsden, Mariluz Cortes, Carl Dahlman, Ashok Desai, Francisco Sercovich, Simon Teitel and Larry Westphal for extensive discussions and helpful suggestions. This paper has also been presented to several seminars in the World Bank and elsewhere, and I wish to acknowledge the comments of numerous participants. The views expressed here are, however, the author’s alone and cannot be attributed to the World Bank or any of its staff members. The revised draft of this paper was written while I was honorary Director of Studies at the Indian Council for Research in international Economic Relations, New Delhi: the hospitality and help rendered by ICRIER are gratefully acknowledged.