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Structural Change In India the impact of the very same British industrialisation led to deindustrialisation in some sectors, and decline of old urban centres. Just as manufacturing boomed in Britain, traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures from India declined in the face of Manchester competition. This period also saw the further decline of cities such as Surat and Masulipatnam while Bombay Chennai and Madras grew. When the British took over Indian states, towns like Thanjavur, Dhaka, and Murshidabad lost their courts and, therefore, some of their artisans and court gentry. From the end of the 19 thcentury, with the installation of mechanised factory industries, some towns became much more heavily populated. Urbanluxurymanufactureslikethehighqualitysilksand cottons of Dacca or Murshidabad must have been hit firstbythealmostsimultaneouscollapseofindigeneous court demand and the external market on which these Mumbai had largely depended. Village crafts in the interior, and particularly, in regions other than eastern India where British penetration was earliest and deepest,probably survived muchlonger,comingtobeseriouslyaffectedonlywith the spread of railwa(Sarkar 1983: 29) Unlike Britain where the impact of industrialisation led to B ox 1.2 more people moving into urban The Census of India Report, 1911, Vol. 1, p. 408. areas, in India the initial impact of the same British industriali- TheextensiveimportationofcheapEuropeanpiecegoodsandutensils, sation led to more people moving and the establishment in India itself of numerous factories of the into agriculture. The Census of Western type, have more or less destroyed many village industries. India Report shows this clearly. The high prices of agricultural produce have also led many village Sociological writings in India artisans to abandon their hereditary craft in favour of agriculture… have often discussed both the The extent to which this disintegration of the old village organisation contradictory and unintended is proceeding varies considerably in different parts. The change is consequences of colonialism. most noticeable in the more advanced provinces. Comparisons have been made between the industrialisation in the west and the growth of a western middle class with that of the Indian experience. Box 1.3 carries one such observation. It also shows how industrialisation is not just about new machine based production but also a story of the growth of new social groups in society and new social relationships. In other words it is about changes in 7 the Indian social structure. Reprint 2026-27