Analysis of the Causes

The difference in the technological development of the Japanese and Indian textile industries is indeed quite startling. Both operated in labour surplus economies, and both obtained initial technology and early technical advice from Britain, mostly from the same firm. Yet one transformed the technology in ways appropriate to its environment much better than did the other. Our objective here is to identify as many plausible reasons as possible why this occurred; it is necessarily difficult, if not impossible, to present any single satisfactory causal explanation — or to engage in multivariate analysis placing appropriate quantitative weights on each. In what follows, we have instead attempted to attribute at least qualitative weights to various plausible causal explanations.