TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIES VIEWS OF TIRTHANKAR ROY: >Revisionist argument >rather than being destroyed by British rule and laissez

faire policy, these industries were drastically reorganized inside modern markets. This transition was hard on the workers but led to the revitalization of industries that remained traditional only in the categorical sense. Rather than being relegated to a small traditional niche in the 19 and 20th centuries, old modes of manufacturing were radically reorganized. Their operations expanded in their new institutional environment. >similarities with industrial restructuring in Europe >argues for dynamism and inventiveness of the Indian entrepreneur. > Traditional industry modernized and played a creative role in Indian industrialization. However, destructive aspect has tended to be overemphasized( de-industrialization of traditional industry, esp cotton textiles). Roy considers the creative aspect to be more imp. Colonialism and the opening of the country to cheap industrial imports did notdestroy Indias burgeoning industrial potential.Disputes the most widely known position available on artisans in British India.Enables India to be compared with other cases of industrialization. Industrialization in Britain did not necessarily mean de-industrialization for her colonies. Critiques Marxist view: Marxist tradition has consistently argued that the destructive impact of economic contact with Europe on the modern Third World outweighed any possible creative or productive impact. Evidence commonly used to support this view: the distress of the Indian textile artisan facing competition from British cloth and yarn in the 19th century + a decline in total industrial employment in India in the census period 1881-1931. -rejected the marxist view that Indian underdevelopment is to be partly explained in terms of the destructive impact of colonialism on traditional crafts. -decline was not the main dynamics. -alternative explanation he proposes: based on a combination of high population pressure and lack of investment in human capital. (critiqued by claudemarkovits-too narrow). -within each sector, there were dynamic segments and more static ones. In case of handloom weaving, declining segments and dynamic ones coexisted.Immiserisation of groups of weavers of coarse cloth went hand in hand with the economic and social rise of categories of skilled operators. -Argues that under colonialism, specifically with the introduction of long-distance trade, traditional industries (defined as tool-based, informally organized, and of pre-colonial origin) underwent substantial reorganization and growth. These changes were similar to what happened in early modern Europe, but still economic development did not continue in India. -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. The urban shift was frequently accompanied by a large increase in the size of the typical factory, and a move away from family labour to wage labour.

-decline of certain products, places and forms of production occurred simultaneously with diversification, dynamism, and growth in other branches of the same industries. -common trends: proletarianism and labour specialization, consolidation, greater intervention of capital into the new production process, subcontracting, and the replacement of local elite consumers with new mass markets. In each industry he studies, Roy finds some form of transformation of handicrafts into manufacture, fuelled by an abundance of cheap, skilled labour and an economic infrastructure conducive to the creation of new markets and capital flows. -it responded to the stimulus of commercialisation by undergoing a process of adaptation and transformation which had very different outcomes sectorwise. -artisans were quick to adopt modern methods. Egs. The move to use sheet metal in constructing brassware, mineral dyes for carpets, and the fly shuttle in hand loomed silks. Dispels the notion that Indians were technologically stagnant.

>REASONS:Why did industrialization never lead to the sustained increase in per capita income? The conversion of craft skills into industrial and innovative capacity required an induced social revolution in India the conditions for which were not created. 1)true reason for stagnation was too rapid rate of growth of population 2)absence of government involvement in the provision of education and credit.

>statistics: industry probably employed about 15% of the workers in the middle of the 19th century (10-15 million persons) >period of study: 1870s-1930s >industries under study: handloom weaving, leather, brassware, carpets and gold thread (jari). HANDLOOM WEAVING AND JARI: -handloom weaving did not die, in fact, it thrived, though in some regions more than others. Everywhere, however, it adapted to changing conditions. Since decline was specific to certain regions and products, it needs to be explained in each setting, not assumed to be the structural trend against which all others are measured. Deeply influenced by exposure to imported substitutes. In handloom weaving, competitive decline was not a general occurrence, but specific to certain types of market and apparel. Noncompeting hand-woven cloths, on the other hand, experienced long-distance trade not as a debilitating force but possibly as a creative one. Import also affected the making of gold thread for various uses in textiles, evidenced in the withdrawal of the industry from various centres to two key locations: SURAT and BANARAS, which successfully resisted the chilling effects of imports to perpetuate lasting, yet quite different, gold thread industries.

LEATHER: The custom bound rural industry gave way to urban based tanning factories and slaughterhouses. Leather workers could escape disadvantages of caste status through proletarianization. -the development in the late 19th 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 significant value. There was a fairly rapid switch from a small rural craft to large urban slaughterhouses and tanning factories. These factories remained chiefly staffed and quite often owned by the same castes that had performed these functions in the villages. CARPETS: became major export commodities, whose production was increasingly organized into urban factories, combining new relations of production and capitalization with the persistence of an apprentice system. >shift from family labour to wage labour: since family labour is likely to be less specialized than wage labour, the trend implies rising average productivity despite the stagnation in overall employment. National income statistics of both pre- and post-independence periods show a growth in industrial incomes and productivity even with low growth rates in industrial employment. Thus, the stagnation story suggested by census employment totals is misleading. BRASSWARE: illustrates 2 processes: integration of the home market and creation of an export market. FINAL OUTCOME: The industrialization built on the basis of traditional industry clearly did not generate prosperity or development in South Asia comparable to that in Europe or Japan, developmentbeing defined as a sustained rise in average income. CONCLUSION: Artisinal activity survived in India for the same reasons that it has done elsewhere in the world: consumer preference, absence of mechanized alternative. But survival was not static for artisans needed to adapt to changing conditions of demand and supply from the 19th century onwards, induced mainly by the extension of long distance trade. Competition increased. Patronage and old moral economies collapsed. Division of labour and specialization increased. Systems such as putting out and factories spread. New and distant markets led to efficiency enhancing changes in industrial organization. However the overall outcome of Indian colonial and post colonial industrial development was unsatisfactory, as incomes failed to rise significantly and no major qualitative transformation took place.