India emerged from colonial rule as an economy with a ‘modern sector’ but remaining a primarily agrarian economy. Independence produced an important structural break in India’s economic trajectory, and that further such breaks followed. Yet the 75-year story of change has been characterized by significant forward movement along some dimensions of development being accompanied by absence of change or even regressive movement along others. The East Asian kind of industrialization-based rapid growth with improved distribution of income did not quite happen in India. Neither has India been able to emerge under globalization as a significant location of manufacturing production for the world market. Acceleration in growth since the early 1980s has instead been accompanied by rising inequality, ‘premature de-industrialization’, and greater importance of services and construction as contributors to expansion of output as well as non-agricultural employment. Low employment to population ratios in India specially of women, the persistence of a high share of agriculture in that employment, and pervasive ‘informality’ have been the consequences. The paper will present an analytical discussion of this continuing challenge to achieve the transformation inherent in the notion of development—where economic change underlies a larger process of social change.