Summary The Indian State of Kerala presents a paradox of development, with its remarkable social achievements and relative industrial backwardness. This paper describes Kerala’s industrial backwardness as due to a path-dependent process of industrialization. A policy decision in the 1930s—marked by a priority for investments in chemical-based industries and the identification of hydroelectricity as a potential basis for industrialization—continue to have implications for industrial growth in Kerala today. With the policy decision in the 1930s, industrial structure in Kerala came to be locked into a pattern that offered very little potential for interindustry interlinkages and industrial growth.