This paper evaluates the impact of a location-based infrastructure development program on manufacturing enterprises’ business activities and performance. Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY) - the program in question – was carried out by the central government of India to facilitate development in the country’s most economically backward regions and reduce regional economic imbalances. Using data from the National Sample Surveys, we adopt a Fuzzy Regression-Discontinuity Design to exploit RSVY’s transparent assignment mechanism. Specifically, we find evidence indicating a greater level of business engagement as well as profitability for treated firms, almost immediately after the program’s introduction. We also test for a mechanism and show that treated firms were potentially benefiting from a better infrastructural environment following RSVY intervention, as suggested by a significantly lower reported probability of experiencing electricity outage and/or power cut. Lastly, the result from our heterogeneous tests show that the policy effect is mainly driven by Own Account Manufacturing Enterprises (OAMEs), the micro-entities which dominate rural India’s informal sector. Overall, our comprehensive finding contributes to the current unsettled literature on impact evaluation of location-based policies, providing at least one indication against anecdotal criticisms on the distributional effectiveness of such programs.