Despite the pursuit of similar industrial policies during the post-1990s, Indian states have revealed divergent outcomes in industrial growth. Such divergence suggests different levels of policy implementation which itself is a result of the interplay of formal and informal institutions,...

The paper discuses the role played by institutional behavior in determining the policy outcomes of a state. Apart from secondary data the paper is also based on information collected from selected stakeholders:business associations, firms,trade unions and bureaucrats.

While there is a clear policy shift towards large-scale industrialization in the state of West Bengal (WB) during the early 1990s, not much improvement can be discerned in the performance of the manufacturing output. Moreover, contrary to the Indian experience, more than half of the...