What do you understand by the term ‘deindustrialisation’?
What was its impact on the Indian Economy? India is not an industrial country in the true and modern sense of the
term. But by the standards of the 17th and 18th centuries, i.e., before the
advent of the Europeans in India, India was the ‘industrial workshop’ of the
world.
What do you understand by the term
‘deindustrialisation’? What was its impact on the Indian Economy?
Further, India’s traditional village economy was characterised by the “blending of agriculture and handicrafts”.
But Deindustrialisation internal balance of the village
economy had been systematically slaughtered by the British Government. In the
process, traditional handicraft industries slipped away, from its pre-eminence
and its decline started at the turn of the 18th century and proceeded rapidly
almost to the beginning of the 19th century.
This process came to be known as ‘de-industrialisation’—a
term opposite to industrialisation. The use of the word ‘de-industrialisation’
could be traced to 1940. Its dictionary meaning is ‘the reduction or
destruction of a nation’s industrial capacity’. This term came into prominence
in India to describe the ‘process of destruction of Indian handicraft industries
by competition from the products of British manufacture during the nineteenth
century’. What do you understand by the term ‘de-industrialisation’? What was
its impact on the Indian Economy?
Industrialisation is associated with a relative shift in the
proportion of national income as well as workforce away from agriculture. In
other words, with the progress of industrialisation, proportion of income
generated by and the percentage of population dependent on industry should
decline.
What
do you understand by the term ‘deindustrialisation’? What was its impact on the
Indian Economy?
While estimating the distribution of global output of
manufactured goods, P. Bairoch concluded that India’s share of manufacturing
output in the world was as high as 1.9.7 p.c. in 1800. In a span of 60 years,
it plummeted to 8.6 p.c. (in 1860) and to 1.4. p.c. in 1913. The declining
share of industrial output in the’ world output could be attributed to an
absolute decline in manufacturing output per person.
Causes of De-Industrialisation:
Industry that had experienced the onslaught of
de-industrialisation most was the cotton textile industry. It was the largest
provider of employment after agriculture. India’s cotton goods were the best in
the world before 1800.
Machine- made textile goods of Britain, however, did the great damage to this
Indian industry since 1750. Consequent upon industrial revolution in cotton
textile industry there had been massive growth of British imports in India and
the domination of British cloth in the Indian market did the havoc; it created
large scale unemployment as well as unbelievable drop in wages among the
spinners and weavers. Other affected industries were: jute handloom weaving of
Bengal, woolen manufactures of Kashmir, silk manufacture of Bengal, hand-paper
industry, glass industry, lac, bangles, etc.
What do you understand by the term ‘deindustrialisation’?
What was its impact on the Indian Economy Britain experienced
‘industrialisation’ in the mid-18th century and India experienced
‘de-industrialisation’ at the same time. The process of de-industrialisation
of India began with the gradual disappearance of cotton manufactures from the
list of India’s exports and the remarkable growth of cotton manufactures in the
list of her imports mainly from Britain.
That is why it is said that Britain “inundated the very
mother country of cotton with cottons”, thereby eclipsing India’s traditional
handicraft industries. Now we will trace out the causes that brought about the
catastrophic decline of these industries.
Impacts on India :
The Economic Deindustrialisation of
India refers a period of reduction in industrial based activities within the
Indian economy from 1757 to 1947. The deindustrialisation of India started when
the Indian economy was colonised under the British Empire. The Indian Economy
was ruled under the British East Indian Company Rule from 1757 to 1858. This
ruling period mainly involved British protectionist policies, restricting sales
of Indian goods and services within Britain while exposing Indian markets to
British goods and services, without tariffs and quotas. By the 19th century,
the British empire had overtaken the Indian economy as the world's largest
textile manufacturer. From 1858, the Indian economy was ruled directly under
the British Imperial Rule, also known as the Rule under the British Raj. India
continued to be ruled directly under the British until the end of the
deindustrialisation period in 1947.
The Mughal Economy is well known
for the building of the Mughal Road system, establishing the Rupee as a
standardised currency, and the unification of the country. Prior to deindustrialisation,
India was one of the largest economies in the world, accounting for
approximately one quarter of the global economy. Mughal India is considered to
be one of the richest periods among early modern Islamic cultures.
The Indian economy specialised in
industrialisation and manufacturing, accounting for at least one quarter of the
world's manufacturing output before the 18th century. Under the Mughal Empire,
agricultural production had increased particularly food crops such as barley,
rice and wheat and other non-food crops such as opium and cotton. By the middle
of the 17th century, India had begun to grow large amounts of foreign crops
including maize and tobacco.