Infrastructure And Government’s Colonial Policy
Even this argument does not hold water. Although there are no records of the population before the first census in 1871, one can summarise from later censuses that the population could not have been large and the rise in it even if big in percentage ( though it might not have been the case ) could not add much. In 1871 the population stood at 25.4 crores. According to Kingsley Davis, in the long period of 60 years between 1881 and 1941, the Indian population increased by only 55 per cent, while the population of Japan doubled during the same period. The population of England and Wales increased more than three times during the 19th century. So, compared to these countries during the period under review, India’s population increased at a slow pace. But what happened in those countries did not happen in India. Development, as indicated by a rise in national income, took place faster than the increase in population in those countries. In India, on the other hand, national income rose very slowly at about 0.5 per cent per year. So, despite a small rise in population, per capita income actually declined. This leads one to conclude that population rise in the past did not contribute to stagnation. It must be something else that obstructed a faster growth of national income.
Government’s Colonial Policy
It is argued and rightly so by eminent thinkers like Dababhại Naoroji and Romesh Dutt that the basic cause of India’s stagnation was the policy of the British Government. It was pointed out that while the British gave to India centralised administration, a new judicial system, a law and order agency, and thereby created a favourable framework for the country’s economic growth, development did not take place. The state apparatus was in fact used in the interest of British industry and against that of the Indian economy. –Administrative rules, procedures .and laws were made to protect · largely the interests of British traders, British shippers and British manufactures.
Britishers also developed roads, railways and ports. But these were used for the export of Indian raw materials to England for British industries and the import of British manufactured goods into the county. Even the establishment of railways was done with imported equipment, thereby positively preventing the growth of the iron and steel industry in the country. Industrial and commercial policies were so designed that not only the existing native manufacturing industries were destroyed, but also new industries were prevented from coming Heavy import duties on Indian goods entering Britain, high excise duties on goods manufactured in India, exemption from inland transit duties to British traders preference to British manufacturers under the government’s store purchase policies, etc. amounted to placing all sorts of blocks in the way of the growth of domestic industries, local entrepreneurs and native industrial culture. As if all this was not enough, British rulers imposed the free trade principle on the country, apparently to provide competitive conditions to British manufacturers against Indian manufacturers within India. Superficially, this provided equal status to British and Indian manufacturers. Behind this facade of equality, however, British manufacturers were in fact made more than equal under their political power.
The Indian manufacturers were denied facilities for the establishment of industries. Thus handicapped, competition from Indians was made non-existent. As has been aptly observed by H.H. Wilson, the British employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom they could not have contended on equal terms. It may, however, be mentioned that during the inter-war period, the government did pursue a policy of protection for Indian industries. But this “new economic policy, however, was a case of too little and too late”. This protection could be granted only to existing industries, which satisfied certain very stringent conditions. No provision was made for starting new industries such as chemicals or machine tools. Further, the shift in policy came at a time when home industries and native talent had already been destroyed, when such major works as construction of when after World War I the government’s demands for goods.