The Indian economy was almost entirely rural. The villages, however, were mostly self-sufficient units, isolated from outside. All the material needs to be satisfied locally. Only a few goods like salt and some luxury goods such as ornaments were brought from outside. Further, all the artisans lived in villages and supplied the requirements of the population. The lack of adequate communications too kept the villages – immune from outside contacts. * A very important feature of rural life was the fact that the majority of artisans were servants of the village. The artisans possessed lands that were given to them by the village free or at reduced rent. The artisans performed various services for which they were given a share of the.. produce of land cultivated by other villagers. This non-dependence on the outside gave the village strength to survive and resist any external attack.<\/p>\n
Another predominant aspect of village life was the extremely simple division of labour. Each one did all the jobs connected with the production of a commodity. This made the skill hereditary. At the same time, this enabled a village to ensure the supply of artisans and their services even during turbulent times. But this also obstructed mobility and thus stood in the way of progress in skills. Besides, it resulted in protecting them from outside competition, as the villages would not buy from outside, even when offered better or cheaper goods. The consequence was the absence of localisation of industry, except in the case of artistic wares, which were produced in towns.<\/p>\n
The urban population was small. According to one estimate “urban population could not have, amounted to more than 10 per cent of the total population”. The reason for this was play predominance of agriculture and the existence of the bulk of industries in villages. Most of the towns grew up because these were either sacred places ( like Banaras, Puri, Gaya etc.) or the seats of power ( like Bijapur, Golkonda etc.) or trading centres ( like Mirzapur ). Although the dominant causes of the growth of these towns were non-industrial in character, yet there were certain industries in all the towns. For example, in places of pilgrimage vessels to hold Ganges water, utensils for worship etc. were manufactured. In towns depending upon courts, luxury goods like gold and silver works, stone, ivory and wood carving etc. were produced. These towns, however, were marked by features of a modern economy. There was, for example, a complex division of labour, so that the production of a commodity was the end-product of many workers, specialising in its different parts.<\/p>\n
It resulted in many benefits large-scale production; saving of times of the workers; enhancement of skills; improvement in the quality of products etc. Another feature was that the town economy was an exchange economy. Most of the goods were sold throughout the country or outside. Town-people depended upon outside sources like villages for many goods, like food grains and other agricultural products etc. This gave rise to markets and extensive use of money and credit. The exchange economy of towns had thus become a money economy. The above description of the Indian economy sums up its state on the eve of British rule. In a nutshell, as Gadgil has well-formulated, “the characteristic of Indian economic conditions during the earlier half of the nineteenth century were also found in most countries during their corresponding stage of industrial development”. In other words, the economy was, like others. similar European economies, posed for modern industrial development. India, however, did not develop. But this is another story that we narrate in the section that follows.<\/p>\n
Here are some notes for Economy During British Period.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rural Economy During Pre British Period The Indian economy was almost entirely rural. The villages, however, were mostly self-sufficient units, isolated from outside. All the material needs to be satisfied locally. Only a few goods like salt and some luxury goods such as ornaments were brought from outside. Further, all the artisans lived in villages … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}