[...] While explanations for the Emergency differ - with the government claiming it was a response to national security threats and opponents claiming it had much more to do with Indira Gandhi's own thirst for power - all are agreed it had nothing to do with the Business Houses. However, while the Emergency was called for reasons unrelated to the Business Houses, by outlawing strikes and imprisoning the most militant trade unionists the biggest beneficiaries were the large industrial conglomerates: with no days lost to strikes, industrial production boomed; and with wages frozen, profits soared

Flush with cash and aware that the Emergency would be a temporary phenomenon and elections would be called sooner or later, the Business Houses set about insuring themselves with any future government. They did this in the time-honoured fashion of pumping huge amounts of money into both major political parties (Congress and Janata), wisely hedging their bets. [...]

The licensing system engendered by the Minicomputer Policy was the major policy shift [...] the DoE was essentially offering licenses to any Indian firm applying to enter the computer hardware industry. [...]

This impacted directly, rapidly and negatively on the competitive structure of the Indian hardware industry. The outcome was a heavily fragmented industry comprising numerous small computer firms. Lumbered with limited market share, excessive price competition and uneconomic scale, most firms were unable to generate the profits required for reinvestment in upgrading and expansion. [...] Reinvesting profits with a longer-term view of breaking into export markets made little sense in the absence of government commitment towards developing the industry.