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.
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.”