History, asked by poojaaditipooja979, 1 year ago

Indian industries expanded during and after the first world war explain the effects.

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Answered by som5742
3
India had never been an industrial country in the modern sense of the term. In this sense, even England and other industrialised countries of today had not been so, until recently. What strikes most about India was that even being pre­dominantly an agrarian country large varieties of industries existed in India and some of them competed quite successfully with many other countries. But her industrial supremacy started crumbling when the English cotton industry raised its head rapidly by the mid-18th century.

Two Important Development of This War:

(i) The beginning of the era of industrial revolution in England around 1750 and

(ii) The battle of Plassey in 1757 that established the Company (foreign) rule.


As soon as the battle was won, the foreign ruler started abusing both economic and political power in an un-sympathetic and hostile way. Under pressure from the powerful rising English manufacturing interests, EIC dealt a severe blow to Indian industries that led to final extinction—the phase of India’s ‘deindustrialization’. Now the cycle turned inside out. It employed the arm of political injustice on Indian products (one-way free trade) to strangulate a competitor with whom she could not contend ‘on equal terms’.

The last nail in the coffin was hammered in 1813 when the trading monopoly of the EIC was withdrawn. It was the political domination and the commercial policy of Britain that threw open India to all. India now suddenly was reduced to an importing country from an exporting nation. Indian market now became flooded with machine-produced goods at a lower price and also witnessed the loss of export markets. Further tragedy was in store.

Being a colonial country, she had to pay a large sum for England’s industrialization scheme. India was forced to supply raw materials for triggering industrial revolution with greater rapidity in England. India was then forcibly transformed from being a country of combined agricultures and manufactures into an agricultural colony of British manufac­turing capitalism.

A history of modern Indian large scale private industry between 1850 and 1914 is associated with the developments in mainly plantations like jute, cotton, and steel. Beginning of these modern Indian industries was the ‘product of India’s economic contact with Britain’.

There was also a limited development of mining, especially coal. One thing that is worth noting is that most of these industries, except textile factories, were under European control.

In the early days of the Company rule, Indian raw jute had been in great demand for the Dundee mills. World conditions after 1850 were quite propitious for the growth of jute manufacturing and the credit for jute spinning firm in Rishra, near Serampore, Bengal, went to George Acland—a Scottish. The founda­tions of cotton textile industry were laid also during the early 1850s. Though the jute industry was dominated by the foreigners the cotton industry was shaped and cared by the natives, mainly the Parsee entrepreneurs.

Some abortive attempts were made by the East India Company in the 19th century to develop iron and steel industry. However, the credit for the development of large scale manufacture of steel in India goes to Jamshedji Tata and his son Dorabji. Tata Iron and Steel Company were set up in 1907 and it started function of producing pig iron in 1911 and steel ingots in 1912.

The progress or the achievements of modern large scale industries can be visualised by considering the output produced and the employment data. Between 1880 and 1914 large scale industrial output grew at the rate of 4-5 p.c. p.a. —a rate of growth that is comparable to other contemporary countries of the world. But in the light of total economic activity in India, output produced was rather insignificant. This is also true about the employment situation; it came to less than eight-tenths of 1 p.c. of the total labour force in 1913-14.

Meanwhile India’s industrial structure started diversifying. In spite of inadequacy of domestic demand and high production costs, industries like woollen mills, breweries, and paper making industries made significant march during this time. Though these industries were recorded officially as the large industries, they were small in character.

Other industries having small-scale character that operated were tanning, vegetable oil processing, glass-making, leather goods manufacturing, etc. Despite diversification, India’s modern manufacturing industry could not develop on a sound footing before the outbreak of world war I.

The Three Important Reason Behind Such Industrial Development were:

(i) Young in experienced entrepreneurs,

(ii) Absence of State aid towards industrialisation,

(iii) Steep uninhibited competition with developed foreign machine manufactures.


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