Introduction

• The Government of India had to take a series of steps such as the establishment of the Planning Commission and announcement of five year plans.
• An overview of the goals of five year plans and a critical appraisal of the merits and limitations of planned development has been covered in Unit III.
• J AMES MILL's book, "History of British India", was published by Associated Publishing House, New Delhi in 1972.
• R AJENDRA PRASAD's book, "India Divided", was published by Hind Kitabs, Bombay in 1946.
• A MARTYA SEN's book, "Poverty and Famines", was published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi in 1999.
• The structure of India’s present-day economy is not just of current making; it has its roots steeped in history, particularly in the period when India was under British rule which lasted for almost two centuries before India finally won its independence on 15 August 1947.
• The sole purpose of the British colonial rule in India was to reduce the country to being a raw material supplier for Great Britain’s own rapidly expanding modern industrial base.
• An understanding of the exploitative nature of this relationship is essential for any assessment of the kind and level of development which the Indian economy has been able to attain over the last six and half decades.
• India had an independent economy before the advent of the British rule.
• Infrastructure facilities, including the famed railway network, needed upgradation, expansion and public orientation.
• The industrial sector was crying for modernisation, diversification, capacity building and increased public investment.
• Along with the development of roads and railways, the colonial dispensation also took measures for developing the inland trade and sea lanes.
• The volume of India’s exports undoubtedly expanded but its benefits rarely accrued to the Indian people.
• The social benefits, which the British introduced, were outweighed by the country’s huge economic loss.
• The British introduced the railways in India in 1850 and it is considered as one of their most important contributions.
• The inland waterways, at times, also proved uneconomical as in the case of the Coast Canal on the Orissa coast.
• By the time India won its independence, the impact of the two-century long British colonial rule was already showing on all aspects of the Indian economy.
• The introduction of the expensive system of electric telegraph in India served the purpose of maintaining law and order.
• The agricultural sector was already saddled with surplus labour and extremely low productivity.
• The postal services, despite serving a useful public purpose, remained inadequate.
• The railways affected the structure of the Indian economy in two important ways: enabling people to undertake long distance travel and thereby break geographical and cultural barriers, and fostering commercialization of Indian agriculture which adversely affected the self-sufficiency of the village economies in India.
• Foreign trade was oriented to feed the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
• Prevalence of rampant poverty and unemployment required welfare orientation of public economic policy.
• Under the colonial dispensation, the economic policies of the government were concerned more with the protection and promotion of British economic interests than with the need to develop the economic condition of the colonised country and its people.
• The economy of pre-colonial India was characterised by various kinds of manufacturing activities, particularly well known for its handicraft industries in the fields of cotton and silk textiles, metal and precious stone works etc.
• R.C. Desai's estimates during the colonial period were considered significant.
• The policies of the British colonial government transformed India into a supplier of raw materials and consumer of finished industrial products from Britain.
• India’s economy under the British colonial rule remained fundamentally agrarian with about 85 per cent of the country’s population living in villages and deriving livelihood directly or indirectly from agriculture.
• The terms of the revenue settlement were also responsible for the zamindars adopting such an attitude.
• Low levels of technology, lack of irrigation facilities and negligible use of fertilisers, all added up to aggravate the plight of the farmers and contributed to the dismal level of agricultural productivity.
• The main interest of the zamindars was only to collect rent regardless of the economic condition of the cultivators, causing immense misery and social tension among the latter.
• Despite being the occupation of such a large population, the agricultural sector experienced stagnation due to various systems of land settlement introduced by the colonial government.
• There was some evidence of a relatively higher yield of cash crops in certain areas of the country due to commercialisation of agriculture.
• Some individual attempts to measure such incomes yielded conflicting and inconsistent results.
• Most studies found that the country’s growth of aggregate real output during the first half of the twentieth century was less than two per cent coupled with a meagre half per cent growth in per capita output per year.
• The zamindari system implemented in the then Bengal Presidency comprising parts of India’s present-day eastern states, resulted in the profit accruing out of the agriculture sector going to the zamindars instead of the cultivators.
• The colonial government never made any attempt to estimate India’s national and per capita income.
• These products enjoyed a worldwide market based on the reputation of the fine quality of material used and the high standards of craftsmanship seen in all imports from India.
• Victor Alexander Vruce, the Viceroy of British India in 1894, stated that India is the pivot of the Empire and if the Empire loses any other part of its Dominion, it can survive, but if it loses India, the sun of the Empire will have set.
• Muslin is a type of cotton textile which had its origin in Bengal, particularly, places in and around Dhaka, now the capital city of Bangladesh.