In 1987 the World Bank had recommended "greater liberalisation" in Indian electronics industry. Two of the predicted consequences of this were that policy reforms would aid an increase in productivity and greater research and development initiatives amongst the firms of the industry. This paper verifies those two predictions for the Indian electronics hardware industry. It finds that despite liberalisation, the performance with respect to partial and total productivity of the electronics hardware industry was dismal. The firms preferred to import technology over investing in research and development and developing it indigenously.
