Mike Davis in his new book on 19th c genocides describes how British
laisser-faire policies guaranteed famines + colonial subjection in India;
imperialism, in this view, worked to consolidate and entrench the
core-periphery divide which is still accelerating today and is still at the
heart of the modern - imperialist- world-system.
Here is quite a different view, by an authoritative *Indian* economist, which
argues that it was the fault of the caste system. This, not the Brits, stopped
Indian take-off in its tracks.
Go figure.
Mark
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Subject: Wolcott on Roy, _Traditional Industry in the Economy of
Colonial India_
------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (February 2001)
Tirthankar Roy, _Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial
India_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xi + 252 pp.
$64.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521-65012-7.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Susan Wolcott, Department of Economics,
University of Mississippi. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
This new book by Tirthankar Roy of the Indira Gandhi Institute of
Development Research, Bombay is well worth reading. It is a careful
and extremely well researched discussion of the evolution of five
important craft-based industries during the colonial period: handloom
weaving, on which Roy has written before, gold thread (jari),
brassware, leather, and carpets. Roy addresses himself to India's
failure to grow. Why did industrialization never lead to a sustained
increase in per capita income? He sets out to do two things in this
book. The first is to dispute the contention that the craft
industries were devitalized by the colonial economy, and thus
prevented from becoming the incubators of an indigenous industrial
revolution. His second task is to show that the true root of
stagnation was the too rapid rate of growth of population and an
absence of government involvement in the provision of education and
credit. In the first of these tasks, the book succeeds. The thorough
discussion and careful analysis of the history and organization of
each of these crafts well illustrate the dynamism and inventiveness
of the Indian entrepreneur. But the second task remains for further
research. Roy shows that the laissez faire policy of the British
colonial government did not crush these indigenous craft industries.
But a history of craft industries by itself is not well suited to
answering the question of why modern industry did not establish
itself in India.
It can, however, offer certain hints. But the hints in this case do
not support Roy's contention in an obvious manner. If the histories
had shown that there were attempts to move from small scale craft
production to large scale factory production, but these attempts were
thwarted by a lack of capital, that would have lent support to Roy's
claim that more direct intervention by the government would have
fostered faster growth. That is not the case. In fact, just the
opposite is true. The centralization of the craft industries as they
moved from their rural roots to a more urban existence is a recurrent
theme in Roy's book. All of these crafts moved away from production
for local consumption to production for long distance trade, either
for export to Europe, or intra-India trade via the new railroads. To
some extent, this was just small craft shops moving to the cities for
economies of agglomeration; information sharing is one theme Roy
often stresses. But the urban shift was frequently accompanied by a
large increase in the size of the typical factory, and a move away
from family labor to wage labor. To this reader, large increases in
the scale of individual operations suggest capital constraints were
not a critical issue. (The large scale of modern factory operations
in India during this period support this contention.)
Nor do the histories of these crafts suggest that there was a problem
that a broad program of education would address. Roy makes the
important point that the artisans were quick to adopt modern methods.
Examples include the move to use sheet metal in constructing
brassware, mineral dyes for carpets, and the fly-shuttle in
handloomed silks. Through simplification, entrepreneurs increased
productivity. His examples successfully dispel any notion that the
Indians were technologically stagnant, at least in these areas. But
this makes it difficult to believe that these crafts, at least, would
have seen greater productivity increase with a more educated
workforce.
What the histories do suggest is the importance of caste and regional
ties in the transmission of knowledge and access to credit. Roy's
attention to these details in his histories is one of the chief
reasons for the book's usefulness. It appears that knowledge and
credit were accessible in India, but not to everyone. Leather, the
longest chapter, provides perhaps the most interesting discussion.
Leather manufacture has until very recently been the preserve of the
lowest rungs of Indian society as it involves handling dead animals,
a very polluting activity among Hindus. (Anything involving death is
polluting (dead cows even more so), and anything which is polluting
is avoided by higher caste Hindus.) Originally leather tanning was
done in the village. Members of certain castes would have the right
to the carcass of animals that died by natural causes in return for
removing and disposing of the carcass. These animals provided more
than sufficient leather for the shoes, water bags and straps needed
by villagers. But the development in the late nineteenth century of
large-scale chrome tanning in the US and mineral leather dyes in
Germany created an upsurge in international demand for hides.
Suddenly the carcasses of animals had a significant value. There was
a fairly rapid switch from a small rural craft to large urban
slaughterhouses and tanning factories. Interestingly, these factories
remained chiefly staffed and quite often owned by the same castes
that had performed these functions in the villages. However, although
there had been a quick response to the change in export demand, and
yet another rapid switch in product mix when export demand died down
in the interwar period, the further step of developing chrome tanning
in India was pursued only on a very limited basis. Roy attributes
this to the restricted access to capital of the lower caste Hindus
who had skills in leather working. Capital was available in India,
but not to them.
Another illustrative story is the non-adoption of the fly shuttle in
much of the trade for coarse cotton cloth. But the reason is not that
the workers did not know better. There had been adoption of better
techniques and large-scale manufacture in handloomed silks. The
cotton weavers were unwilling to make even this relatively small
capital investment in what was essentially a use for otherwise
unemployable household labor - women in agricultural off seasons. The
question of why the opportunity cost of women remained virtually zero
is not directly addressed.
These two examples provide a different justification for government
involvement in education and capital markets than what is typically
given in development texts. Roy writes that "the conversion of craft
skills into industrial and innovative capacity required an _induced
social revolution_ in India, the conditions for which were not
created," (emphasis mine, see p. 59). His book does not directly
prove that this was the case. But it does provide hints to this
effect. A discussion that addresses this point directly instead of
obliquely might yield very interesting results.
Susan Wolcott is currently working on an article entitled "The Role
of Caste Relations in the Slow Industrialization of Colonial India:
Evidence from Textile Strikes, 1921-38."
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