This year’s theme for Young Economist Students’ Meet (YESM) is Reviewing India’s Industrialization: Problems and Prospects. According to me, such a theme for a students’ seminar is very relevant at this point of time because it has been 65 years since the country’s independence and India is emerging as one of the biggest and fastest growing economies of the world. There are very many obstacles still which hinder this growth and there are other aspects of the Indian economy that are greatly advantageous. So, assessing the path of industrialization in India and the future of the country is very much pertinent in today’s context.
Now, India’s industrialization can be divided into three periods, i.e. the pre British era, British era and the post British or modern industrialization era. Before the advent of European countries in India, India was famous for its handicraft products and large scale production of cotton, silk, dyestuff, jute, etc. Indian artisans were excellent at making metallic jewelry, household products and various other items. In fact, towards the end of the 18th century, India emerged as one of the major trading centers in the world. However, all this was to change once the Industrial Revolution was triggered in Europe. Factories in England were producing machine made cloth and these were much cheaper that the handmade indigenous ones. As a result demand for products of Indian craftsmen drastically declined and they soon ceased to exist.
The deindustrialization of Indian industry was what followed. This process was further propelled by the colonization of India by the British. The strength of the Indian industry lied in its capability of producing cotton and other fabric materials and exporting it. When the Briti...
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... This is highly damaging to the environment and the government in order to promote sustainable development must implement policies to curb such emission levels.
Economic sustainability is a global issue face by all countries. How long can earth’s resources sustain the ever-growing demand of the masses? Unless, efficient and sustainable means are adopted, all of the natural resources are going to get exhausted.
India has gone from an agricultural economy to one that is characterized by one of the highest growth rates. However, such a change has brought about problems in the form of income inequalities and environmental degradation. Hopefully, in the coming years, the country will learn to combat these obstacles and emerge as one of the economic giants in the world.
“Mother Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not every man’s greed”-
Mohandas Gandhi.
Though the world economy as a whole has grown in recent years, a factor that is not taken into account is that the number “of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million” (Roy 3). In other words, the gap between rich and poor is widening. For India, this has startling implications. Though it is a nation that is developing in many ways, it also is a nation blessed with over one billion citizens, a population tally that continues to grow at a rapid rate. This population increase will greatly tax resources, which can create a setback in the development process. The tragedy, of course, is that the world is full of resources and wealth. In fact, Roy quotes a statistic showing that corporations, and not even just countries, represent 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world (Roy 3). For a country struggling to develop, such information is disheartening. However, there is also a more nefarious consequence of the growing disparity between rich and poor, and power and money being concentrated in the hands of multinational corporations: war is propagated in the name of resource acquisition, and corruption can reign as multinationals seek confederates in developing countries that will help companies drive through their plans, resulting in not only environmental destruction but also the subversion of democracy (Roy 3).
By the 1750s the industrial revolution had begun and there were many advancements directed at cotton weaving as a result of limited technology. Because of this limited technology people were slow in inventing other types of machines. This of was a time of drastic change and transformation from the use of mere hand tools to using powerful machines. A problem with these revolutionary machines was the amount of pollution that was produced, such as CO2, and the faulty methods in which these pollution problems were dealt with. Industrial power, military power, and political power were changing dramatically from that of the pre-industrial ages. New classes formed to make the political system more intricate than anyone had ever seen before. Industrial power was becoming more technologically advanced which lead to large amounts of materials produced by industry. Advancements in military tactics and weaponry also paved the way for battles between countries to become world powers.
Generational conflicts, political strife, environmental regulations, stakeholders in big oil, and many more hurdles affect the push to fully sustainable economies around the world and even here in America. In a world where coal, oil, and natural gas are limited, countries are gobbling it all up as fast as they can before other poorer countries come on the grid. Even though America and other countries gobble up these resources the life of the people is still a struggle to meet basic needs. Sustainability is an intermingling of resource use and protection of the “quality of life”, it is met by using resources sparingly and by recycling or reducing the use of other non-renewable resources to provide for our immediate need, but also to conserve and protect the needs of the next generation and to improve the quality of all the lives to come.
British imperialism caused some negative effects on India through poverty and persecution, but retained more of a positive impact due to its massive improvements in the modernization of India and the overall improvement of Indian civilization. Despite impacting India very positively, imperialism still caused problems within the Indian society. An example of this negative effect is that poverty was very prevalent in India due to the dismantling of the old crafts such as metalwork, glass, paper, etc. The rationale for this huge spike in impoverishment is because India was to be used as a supplier for raw materials, thus halting the growth of the economy (Doc 7). Not only did Britain disrupt the Indian’s industry, but they also caused unemployment through the superseding of Indian handspinners in the 19th century.
During Victorian Era, Britain went through a massive advancing of manufacturing industrial called “Industrial Revolution”. Britain changes from a agriculture country to a industrial base country. Scientific advance thrive the invention of industrial machine, like self-printing press machine in 1812. Due to the industrial revolution, massive production lowers the cost of a product. Both consumer and ...
Many new advancements in textiles and transportation, took place during the late 18th and 19th century. This time period was called the Industrial Revolution, it was the expeditious development of industry. It was brought on by the establishments of machinery. As a result, the inventions shaped the economy and it helped civilization reach further into technology. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain because of its resources and geography.
One of the first and most prominent of these changes was in the textile industry. The textile industry was the staple of the industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution, the textile, or more specifically cotton, industry was performed at home. It happened in a few steps. First, cotton was farmed and harvested. Then, the in home process began. Workers called “spinners” would take the cotton and form it into strands. These strands were the ...
In the course of history, both Japan and England has made significance success in world military and economy. The two island nations (Document A) experienced an industrial revolution and became the economic giant respectively in the 19th century and the 20th century (DBQ 218). As a saying goes that Science and technology constitute the primary productive force. The industrial revolution also brought great changes to textile industry
By the 1750's, the industrial Revolution had begun. At first, inventions were strictly limited to cotton weaving. Inventions such as the spinning jenny and the water-powered frame, both of which provided spinning yarn faster, the spinning mule, the power loom and the cotton gin, all helped the manufacture of cotton goods by speeding up the process. Mass production had begun, along with capitalism. Capitalist, people who have their own materials, money and space, bought many machines and stored them in a factory, where hired people worked the whole day manufacturing goods. The factory system had replaced the cottage industry. Mass production made usually expensive items, such as shoes, less expensive and easily affordable by lower class and less wealthy people.
For example, Mughal rulers before English rule conducted commercial economy by promoting its relationship with markets in and around the Indian Ocean. When the British came, they completely eradicated this idea and and consequently started deindustrialization, “With the developments in industrial techniques in England a new class of industrial capitalists rose there demanding a change in this policy. The British market was to be closed to Indian products and the Indian market opened to British manufacturers.” (Nehru, The Discovery of India) Just 12 years later, textile workers in India faced unemployment; this meant that India would fall behind the rest of the world when in came to progression in industry, “to fall backward in time… losing most of its artisan manufacturing abilities, forcing millions of unemployed craftsmen to return to the soil to scratch meager livelihoods directly from crowded land.” (Voyages,
Massive industrialization of European society occurred partly due to a population rise in the mid-eighteenth century (“Industrial History”). It began in Britain in the mid-eighteenth century (“Industrial History”). Britain was the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution as they had advanced agricultural methods, which put them in a better position to start industrializing. In the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, machines and techniques like spinning frames, mechanical weaving, and textile factories developed (“Industrial History”). The iron industry and cities grew immensely (“Industrial History”).
The Industrial Revolution was the main contributor of the development of factories and modern day machinery. The Industrial Revolution created hundreds of new jobs, influenced many new inventions, and created many new ways of creating and transporting goods. Many jobs including spinners, miners, factory workers, and farmers were beginning to rise in population, due to the new technology being created in the 18th and 19th centuries. The start of new inventions coming into view was beginning in Britain, with many agricultural tools creating new ways to plow and yield crops. Later on, it caused new forms of transportation to be developed, for example, railroads and canals. This essay will explain exactly how these causes began, and how they prospered in the Industrial Revolution.
[6] Kripalani, Majeet & Egnardio, Pete. The Rise Of India. Business Week Online. December 8, 2003. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm
Although many industries produce their work in factories, which are located in cities, the industry that pioneered the Industrial Revolution began in the countryside. This industry was the production of textiles for clothing. Rather than factory workers, it was a peasant family living in a one or two room house, who provided production. The demand for cotton textiles was growing faster than production could produce. Under the organized system, which was now becoming out dated, agents of urban textile merchants would take wool or other unfinished fibers to peasants for them to spin it into thread. The agent would take the thread to another peasants home, where the thread was woven into a finished product, which was sold by the merchant. The textile business was a main feature of the economic status for many families. Thousands of peasant homes included some sort of spinning wheel or handloom. This process was taking too long to meet the growing demands of textiles.(1)
‘Development that meets the needs of the present with the ability for the future generation to meet their own needs.’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) Sustainable development requires three key components: economy, society and environment, sustainable development can be success through striking balance in those factors. These three components are indispensible, they compel to depend on each other. On the other words, we can only gain a decent and energetic environment and society if the economy is strong with a healthy a stable growth rate.