Shaping India: Economic Change in Historical Perspective

✍ Scribed by D. Narayana, Raman Mahadevan

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 381
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume seeks to unravel and contextualize the so-called dichotomy of ‘old’ and ‘new’ India and what binds them together. To understand this complex process, it attempts to apply a long-term historical perspective, a different conception of the economy and cross-disciplinary approaches.

The exceptional feature of this volume is the large historical canvas of essays and its sensitivity to the regional dimension in a country as large and diverse as India. They deal with issues ranging from land and agriculture, entrepreneurship, industry and demographic trends to a critical anatomy of modern Indian economic historiography. Together these essays contribute in providing significantly new and enriching insights into the complex process of transition from colonial to post-colonial economic development. There has been a conscious effort in most cases to capture the influence of the colonial economic structures and processes in shaping the trajectory of growth and development in the post-independence period. Drawing upon a large amount of extremely rich and varied data and information on the socio-economic trends, the book is lucid, well-crafted and reader-friendly.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Abbreviations
List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
Introduction
Paradox of Development
Rising Growth and Disparity
Decline of Agriculture
Poverty Reduction
History and Institutions
Part I Land and Agriculture
1. Evolution of Land Rights in India
2. Structural Changes in Land Distribution and Their Implications for Improving Access to Land
3. Changing Agrarian Structure in India: Reflections on Pre-independence Ideology and Post-independence Reality
4. Population Pressure and Labour Intensification: An Indian Historical Perspective
5. Institutional Strangleholds: Agricultural Science and the State in India
Part II Entrepreneurship and Industry
6. Revisiting Indian Capitalists in Colonial India: Some Critical Reflections
7. From Merchants to Multi-national Enterprises: European Trading Firms in South India’s Plantation Sector
8. Fiat or Trust? A Story of Indian Banking (1857–2007) with a Regional Perspective
9. Six Decades of Industrial Development: Growth of the Manufacturing Sector in India from the 1940s
Part III Demographic Trends
10. Fertility in India since Independence: An Overview
11. Mortality Trends and Patterns in India: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
12. A Long Haul: Revisiting International Migration from India during the 19th and 20th Centuries
Part IV A Critical Theoretical Perspective
13. Pathways to India’s Economic Past
About the Editors
Notes on Contributors
Index