History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization: Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century (Volume VIII, Part 3)

The volume of the Project of the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian civilization aim at discovering the main aspects of India’s heritage and present them in an interrelated way. These volumes, in spite of their unitary look, recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The Project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. In fact, contributions are made by different scholars with different ideological persuasions and methodological approaches. The Project is marked by what may be called ‘methodological pluralism’. In spite of its primarily historical character, this Project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is for the first time that an endeavour of such a unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization like India. The general theme of this collection of essays, forming the second part of the PHISPC publication Economic History of India from the 18th to 20th Century, is the process, nature and extent of transformation of India’s economy during the period. The first part is devoted to a single theme – ‘Peasant History of Late pre-Colonial and Colonial India: Eighteenth to mid-Twentieth Century’. Except for two essays, the second part does not include any agrarian stuff for the pre-1947 period. What follows may give readers an idea of the range of concerns of the contributors to the second part. Two essays are on economies of south India and changes in the ‘unique components of tribal economy’. Other themes include the major shifts in India’s trade and commercial organization; technology and social organization of small-scale artisan production; ‘atypical’ nature of the formation of the industrial working class; ‘colonial transformation’ of Indian economy and the cheapness of production for the home market’ in the slow industrial growth during early British rule; limited substitution of capital for labour and the background to choices of technology over time. Essays on the agricultural trends in the post-1947 period analyse, among other questions, implications of the ‘technology-driven growth strategy’ for agriculture and of the ‘export thrust from agriculture’.