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TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIES

VIEWS OF TIRTHANKAR ROY: >Revisionist argument

>rather than being destroyed by British rule and laissez faire policy, these industries were

drastically reorganized inside modern markets. This transition was hard on the workers but ledto the revitalization of industries that remained traditional only in the categorical sense. Rather

than being relegated to a small traditional niche in the 19 and 20 th centuries, old modes of

manufacturing were radically reorganized. Their operations expanded in their new

institutional environment.

>similarities with industrial restructuring in Europe

>argues for dynamism and inventiveness of the Indian entrepreneur.

> Traditional industry modernized and played a creative role in Indian industrialization.

However, destructive aspect has tended to be overemphasized( de-industrialization oftraditional industry, esp cotton textiles). Roy considers the creative aspect to be more imp.

Colonialism and the opening of the country to cheap industrial imports did notdestroy Indias

burgeoning industrial potential.Disputes the most widely known position available on artisans

in British India.Enables India to be compared with other cases of industrialization.

Industrialization in Britain did not necessarily mean de-industrialization for her colonies.

Critiques Marxist view: Marxist tradition has consistently argued that the destructive impact of

economic contact with Europe on the modern Third World outweighed any possible creative or

productive impact. Evidence commonly used to support this view: the distress of the Indian

textile artisan facing competition from British cloth and yarn in the 19th century + a decline in

total industrial employment in India in the census period 1881-1931.

-rejected the marxist view that Indian underdevelopment is to be partly explained in terms of

the destructive impact of colonialism on traditional crafts.

-decline was not the main dynamics.

-alternative explanation he proposes: based on a combination of high population pressure and

lack of investment in human capital. (critiqued by claudemarkovits-too narrow).

-within each sector, there were dynamic segments and more static ones. In case of handloom

weaving, declining segments and dynamic ones coexisted.Immiserisation of groups of weavers

of coarse cloth went hand in hand with the economic and social rise of categories of skilled

operators.

-Argues that under colonialism, specifically with the introduction of long-distance trade,

traditional industries (defined as tool-based, informally organized, and of pre-colonial origin)

underwent substantial reorganization and growth. These changes were similar to what

happened in early modern Europe, but still economic development did not continue in India.

-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. The urban

shift was frequently accompanied by a large increase in the size of the typical factory, and amove away from family labour to wage labour.

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-decline of certain products, places and forms of production occurred simultaneously with

diversification, dynamism, and growth in other branches of the same industries.

-common trends: proletarianism and labour specialization, consolidation, greater intervention

of capital into the new production process, subcontracting, and the replacement of local elite

consumers with new mass markets. In each industry he studies, Roy finds some form oftransformation of handicrafts into manufacture, fuelled by an abundance of cheap, skilled

labour and an economic infrastructure conducive to the creation of new markets and capital

flows.

-it responded to the stimulus of commercialisation by undergoing a process of adaptation and

transformation which had very different outcomes sectorwise.

-artisans were quick to adopt modern methods. Egs. The move to use sheet metal in

constructing brassware, mineral dyes for carpets, and the fly shuttle in hand loomed silks.

Dispels the notion that Indians were technologically stagnant.

>REASONS:Why did industrialization never lead to the sustained increase in per capita income?

The conversion of craft skills into industrial and innovative capacity required an induced social

revolution in India the conditions for which were not created.

1)true reason for stagnation was too rapid rate of growth of population

2)absence of government involvement in the provision of education and credit.

>statistics: industry probably employed about 15% of the workers in the middle of the 19 th

century (10-15 million persons)

>period of study: 1870s-1930s

>industries under study: handloom weaving, leather, brassware, carpets and gold thread (jari).

HANDLOOM WEAVING AND JARI: -handloom weaving did not die, in fact, it thrived, though in

some regions more than others. Everywhere, however, it adapted to changing conditions. Since

decline was specific to certain regions and products, it needs to be explained in each setting, notassumed to be the structural trend against which all others are measured.

Deeply influenced by exposure to imported substitutes. In handloom weaving, competitive

decline was not a general occurrence, but specific to certain types of market and apparel. Non-

competing hand-woven cloths, on the other hand, experienced long-distance trade not as a

debilitating force but possibly as a creative one.

Import also affected the making of gold thread for various uses in textiles, evidenced in the

withdrawal of the industry from various centres to two key locations: SURAT and BANARAS,

which successfully resisted the chilling effects of imports to perpetuate lasting, yet quite

different, gold thread industries.

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LEATHER: The custom bound rural industry gave way to urban based tanning factories and

slaughterhouses. Leather workers could escape disadvantages of caste status through

proletarianization.

-the development in the late 19th century of large scale chrome tanning in the US and mineral

leather dyes in Germany created an upsurge in international demand for hides. Suddenly thecarcasses of animals had significant value. There was a fairly rapid switch from a small rural

craft to large urban slaughterhouses and tanning factories. These factories remained chiefly

staffed and quite often owned by the same castes that had performed these functions in the

villages.

CARPETS: became major export commodities, whose production was increasingly organized

into urban factories, combining new relations of production and capitalization with the

persistence of an apprentice system.

>shift from family labour to wage labour: since family labour is likely to be less specialized than

wage labour, the trend implies rising average productivity despite the stagnation in overall

employment. National income statistics of both pre- and post-independence periods show a

growth in industrial incomes and productivity even with low growth rates in industrial

employment. Thus, the stagnation story suggested by census employment totals is misleading.

BRASSWARE: illustrates 2 processes: integration of the home market and creation of an export

market.

FINAL OUTCOME: The industrialization built on the basis of traditional industry clearly did not

generate prosperity or development in South Asia comparable to that in Europe or Japan,

developmentbeing defined as a sustained rise in average income.

CONCLUSION: Artisinal activity survived in India for the same reasons that it has done

elsewhere in the world: consumer preference, absence of mechanized alternative. But survival

was not static for artisans needed to adapt to changing conditions of demand and supply from

the 19th century onwards, induced mainly by the extension of long distance trade. Competition

increased. Patronage and old moral economies collapsed. Division of labour and specialization

increased. Systems such as putting out and factories spread. New and distant markets led to

efficiency enhancing changes in industrial organization.

However the overall outcome of Indian colonial and post colonial industrial development was

unsatisfactory, as incomes failed to rise significantly and no major qualitative transformationtook place.