India's steady rise in national income - by nearly 6 per cent per year for two decades - has made the country one of the world's top growth performers. But this growth has also been highly peculiar. It has been "jobless"; and it has been driven more by services than by industry.

In other relevant high-growth economies such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand, the share of industry doubled between 1960 and 2002 to reach 40 per cent or more of gross domestic product.