High-Tech Hotspots: Subnational Policy Variation Towards High-Tech Clusters in India

Abstract

India has seen a rapid growth in high-tech entrepreneurship and innovation, but this growth is not evenly distributed geographically. This thesis investigates why that is the case and the role policy and political economy play in that difference. It finds that the national government’s support of high-tech innovation is largely related to priorities of security and economic growth, and that the support itself is derived from the close relationship with capital in the neoliberal. However, variation at the subnational level is shown to be related to cities’ factor endowments, political competition for capital, and policy differentiation by governments. By analyzing the political conditions and specific policy proposals of these subnational governments, several main patterns emerge. Clusters emerge in the subnational context of India under the influence of: historical endowments of relevant resources via policy and public investment, the facilitation of policy makers by providing funding and institutional transformation, the presence of a political environment aligned with cluster growth, and the persistence of cluster actors and subnational actors in shaping their environments.