Silk Industry Simon Charsley The proposition that improvement in markets cannot be secured by official intervention in them has been put forward by Peter Bauer on the basis of experience of a multitude of efforts in different countries. Over the last generation the silk industry in India has seen a series of important interventions and reforms in marketing. Do these have any lessons for Bauer's thesis? Does Bauer have lessons for future policy in this area in India? The issues are complex and so is the history of interventions. This paper seeks to suggest some preliminary answers.