Yes, India has not undergone an industrial revolution. In fact it has managed to miss the boat on multiple occasions since the turn of the 19th century.
I think you're confusing corporations and factories with industrialization. While the exact definition of the latter is a heavily debated topic, the basic difference has more to do with the society's 'state of mind' as opposed to just a physical attribute. Just because there's a physical presence of industrial hardware doesn't mean that a society is industrialized. The best example is that of the former Soviet Union, who despite having built up incredible prowess in science and select industrial sectors never achieved an industrial revolution.
India is no longer an agrarian nation in the classical sense, it is however the land of contradictions. Only around 20% of its GDP is now agro based as opposed to a little over 60% by the services sector. Yet over 60% of its population is dependent upon the agricultural sector, and it sports one of the largest farm outputs in the world.
The few select Indian multinationals you have listed have little or no bearing upon the industrialization of the Indian society at large, and their representation in the global economic sector is not nearly as competitive as their Western or Chinese counterparts.
India's recent success has been in the services sector (especially by the corporations you have listed) which in turn has propelled its government to consider leapfrogging an industrial revolution and aiming for an "information revolution" instead. Even if such an endeavor were to be possible, the handicap of not having industrialized will always be immense for a country like India. Only special cases like Hong Kong, Singapore or the Emirate of Dubai might be able to operate on such a philosophy.
I'm not sure I agree with your "definition" of labor reform; based on the documented experiences of all the industrialized democratic countries in the West and elsewhere it seems to be wrong.
While I agree with the premise of your post, and in particular, with India having 'missed the boat' in terms of a mass-scale, systematized 'industrial revolution', I must assert that the Indian model is in many ways unique, perhaps even pioneering in terms of a model for market-based, liberal democracy.
For an insight into what this model is, and in particular how this model escaped, or perceptibly 'delayed' the industrial revolution in comparison to "top-down" economies like China, see the following article by Gurcharan Das for example (a bit dated, but valid still.):
India — Skipping the Industrial Revolution?
By Gurcharan Das | Sunday, November 18, 2001
Many Indians are frightened by the idea of bypassing the industrial revolution. They ask, "But won't we still need clothes to wear and cement and steel to build our homes?" This is a misguided worry. Gurcharan Das, former head of Proctor & Gamble India, explains why, in this excerpt from his book "India Unbound."
The most direct answer to such fears is that the value added in the new Information, Communication and Entertainment (ICE) economy is far higher than in the old economy.
Seizing the comparative advantage
Put another way, a little bit of Indian software will be able to buy a great deal of a generic commodity like steel.
In the globalized open economy governed by the World Trade Organization, we will make only what we are good at. That means goods and services where we have a comparative and competitive advantage — and we will import the rest.
Fortunately, we Indians are competitive in many areas. We will, for example, make aluminum, cement and pharmaceuticals — but we will import steel and fertilizers. We are also low-cost producers of at least 12 agricultural commodities.
Adapting to the new economy
Once we reform our agriculture and the world opens its agricultural markets, we should be able to rapidly gain significant world market share in this field.
It is also worth remembering that the new economy is largely a service economy — and creates many more jobs. Meanwhile, the old economy is increasingly cutting jobs, downsizing, mechanizing — and becoming even more capital-intensive.
Skip IT
India, with its vast intellectual capital — two million low-cost English-speaking college graduates each year — is in an excellent position to provide "knowledge workers" to the global economy and to benefit from the knowledge revolution.
With competitive advantages in agriculture and the new knowledge economy, it may in the end be all right for India to skip much of the industrial revolution.
And yet, keen observers of modern India have this grave worry: If our bureaucrats and politicians killed our industrial revolution, won't they do the same with the knowledge revolution?
Why progress will prevail
I believe they will not prevail this time around, for several reasons. One, because our current economic reforms are curtailing their ability to inflict damage.
Two, because high-technology business is virtual — and it is difficult to control what you cannot see. Three, because the Internet creates transparency and brings transactions into the public domain.
Digital divide
It undercuts the bureaucrat's power, which is based on the bartering of knowledge.
Many are rightly skeptical about the new economy's ability to spread to the masses. They can only see the "digital divide." It is true that people will benefit only if they have education.
It is also true that four out of ten children in India are illiterate. It is worse for girls and in the northern states, where teachers are often absent and schools lack even the basic facilities. Children are not motivated to learn and drop out.
A thirst for education
But there is a hopeful sign. There is a new-found thirst and enormous pressure from below for education. In the past six years, India's literacy rate has risen from 52% to 62%.
This is a huge improvement. And if this trend continues, universal literacy is not far behind — despite the politicians. The happiest news comes from India's most underdeveloped states, where growth has accelerated the most.
More accountability
Among girls, literacy has grown faster than among boys.
These figures come from a smaller sample and will hopefully be confirmed in 2001. In some states, responsibility for education is beginning to shift to elected village councils.
This has brought more accountability. Two provinces — Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh — are leading the charge. And their citizens have returned the favor by reelecting their political leaders.
So perhaps there is hope. In the end, if there is one thing that could secure our future, it is vigorous attention to building human capabilities.
IT tools for all
For 50 years, India has been a political democracy, which has given voice to the lower castes through the ballot box and shown the world how political democracy can translate into social democracy.
It has now become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. And it wants to disseminate information technology tools to the common people.
India's model for the world
The government's goal of "IT for All by 2008" reflects an understanding that the spread of information technology is an opportunity.
It is an opportunity for all to overcome historical disabilities and compress the time needed to reach comprehensive development goals.
There is a broader significance in all of this.
If India succeeds in its path of liberal market-based democracy — as it has every right to expect — it will shed new light on the future of liberalism in the world.
Adapted from "India Unbound" by Gurcharan Das. Copyright © 2001 by Gurcharan Das. Used by permission of the author.
India ? Skipping the Industrial Revolution? by Gurcharan Das - The Globalist
I must also assert, that while you are right in positing that the Sowjet Union, as an ideological-political state, did not undergo an industrial revolution, most economic historians view the Russian SFSR, prior to its unification with the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR to form the 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', to have undergone a 'limited industrial revolution': to the extent of a rapid ramping-up of grain output because of greater integration with the world economy, an expansive increase in per capita income, a modest increase in industrial output by the infusion of western science and tech, and a high fertility demographic regime in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, this was mitigated by the attendant capriciousness of law and order and the authoritarianism of the state. Even during the Soviet era, despite significant industrialization and a state-sponsored catalyst to innovation in the form of the many agricultural and industrial research labs that proliferated, most gains were laid redundant by Soviet closetedness. Russian cotton spinners, for instance, might have been able to compete against the English as the Indians did without tariff protection, but heavy industrial output and even the weaving of cotton required tariffs.
However, a reassessment of the Sowjet economic performance based on: recalculations of national income between 1928 and 1940, including, and most importantly, the growth in consumption; the use of simulation models to explore counter-factual development trajectories in other world states; and the reposition of the debate on Soviet performance in a world-historical context have found that the results led to a more favorable assessment of the Sowjet experience than was previously acknowledged. For instance, per capita GDP growth-rates of OECD countries between 1928- 70- before the Soviet Union's decline, plotted with a regression line indicating the pace of convergence of low-average income OECD countries with high-average income OECD countries, showed that the Soviet Union achieved a growth-rate higher than the regression coefficient of that data (meaning higher than the catch-up rates of poorer OECD countries), and infact witnessed a cumulative growth that was higher in this period than the OECD average. In particular, the first Five Year plan (1928-32) saw Soviet GDP increase rapidly, even while private consumption declined slightly and the standard of living increased during the period.
But what Russia failed to achieve, even more than a real wage calibration along western european lines, even more than a rural-urban nexus, even more than private consumption, and the real reason, I believe for its demise was a significant
institutional revolution, that unlike japan, which was at the same income-level at that period, effectuated a synergistic institutional and bureaucratic transformation to effect its rise from a third-world income level in 1913 to a west-European income level in 1989. When the bases for its late Imperial growth collapsed during the interwar years, and later when the bases for its socialist growth at the dissolution of the Sowjet Union, so did Russia's industrial revolution.