what is the national and global significance of Indian cottage industries
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The heart of India lies in her villages, as Gandhiji pointed out many a time; and if her heart is strong and healthy the whole body would be naturally so.
Although today India maintains some of the largest industrial plants of the world and is marching ahead towards her goal of industrialization, the country is much in need of cottage industries in the rural areas.
The need of Cottage Industries in India is immense. According to an Indian economist, ‘In India, more than 74 per cent of the total population lives in the villages where their lot is linked with agriculture. They have to live in the villages as they cannot leave their fields which give them their ‘living’. Side by side they must be provided with some kind of cottage industries upon which they can depend during that period in which they remain idle and unengaged’.
After independence, our country has been taking gigantic strides towards industrialisation. Cottage industries can become and alternative means of employment for the people living in the rural areas. Cottage industries will be of benefit for our villages, which form the back bone of the nation.
The place of cottage industries in the national economy in the country has been unique since time immemorial. India was famous, in the past, for the wealth of the land and for the high artistic skill of her craftsmen. India was exporting wonderful jewellery and superfine embroideries to Europe. European merchants were attracted towards India more by her craft and industry than by the rich raw material.
Cottage-industries declined with the downfall of the Mughal Empire under whose benevolent patronage they had reached their point of perfection. The up-to-date fashionable people of India motivated by the Western culture preferred the well-finished products of Lancashire and Manchester and treated it as beyond their dignity and prestige to embrace the home-made goods. The cut-throat competition was a harmful detent to the Indian craftsmen who could not keep pace with the foreign machine-made articles. Thus the foreign goods began to be sold at cheaper rates compared with the home-made goods. That was decidedly in the best interests of the foreign rulers whose chief motive was to enrich their country at the cost of India.
Although today India maintains some of the largest industrial plants of the world and is marching ahead towards her goal of industrialization, the country is much in need of cottage industries in the rural areas.
The need of Cottage Industries in India is immense. According to an Indian economist, ‘In India, more than 74 per cent of the total population lives in the villages where their lot is linked with agriculture. They have to live in the villages as they cannot leave their fields which give them their ‘living’. Side by side they must be provided with some kind of cottage industries upon which they can depend during that period in which they remain idle and unengaged’.
After independence, our country has been taking gigantic strides towards industrialisation. Cottage industries can become and alternative means of employment for the people living in the rural areas. Cottage industries will be of benefit for our villages, which form the back bone of the nation.
The place of cottage industries in the national economy in the country has been unique since time immemorial. India was famous, in the past, for the wealth of the land and for the high artistic skill of her craftsmen. India was exporting wonderful jewellery and superfine embroideries to Europe. European merchants were attracted towards India more by her craft and industry than by the rich raw material.
Cottage-industries declined with the downfall of the Mughal Empire under whose benevolent patronage they had reached their point of perfection. The up-to-date fashionable people of India motivated by the Western culture preferred the well-finished products of Lancashire and Manchester and treated it as beyond their dignity and prestige to embrace the home-made goods. The cut-throat competition was a harmful detent to the Indian craftsmen who could not keep pace with the foreign machine-made articles. Thus the foreign goods began to be sold at cheaper rates compared with the home-made goods. That was decidedly in the best interests of the foreign rulers whose chief motive was to enrich their country at the cost of India.
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