ISAS Insights

2 Introduction India’s growth trajectory has been unorthodox. Developing economies typically shift from agriculture to manufacturing as surp l us is transferred from farms to investment in factories. From a predominantly agrarian base, the Indian economy , however , has been shifting to services, while manufacturing cont inues to lag ( Table 1). The s ervices sector contribute s 60 % of G ross D omestic P roduct (GDP) , but employ s just 34% of the workforce. India’s buoyant I nformation T echnology (IT) domain is globally competitive , accounting for 20% of the country’s exports, but it employs just 3 million persons . 52% of the work - force still depends on agriculture and associated activities. However , m ass - manufacturing alone has the capacity to absorb the large volume of labour that is displaced from the countrysi de. T he services sector absorbs less labour for each rupee of investment