Full Description
This book investigates the roots of rapid economic growth of India in recent decades, by exploring historical processes from the late colonial period.
Based upon decades-long archival and field research, this book deals with the period from the late nineteenth century to 2013 and offers an integral viewpoint of the economic history of India. While critiquing the conventional understanding that links recent economic growth only with the development of high-tech, export-oriented service sectors under the liberalised economy, the book suggests deeper and wider roots of development that had a cumulative effect in three stages. First, the agrarian development and rural socio-economic changes from the end of the nineteenth century. Second, the state-led import-substitution industrialisation since 1950 that established the industrial foundations for future economic growth. Third, the economic reforms since 1991 that helped technology-intensive industries find new markets with improved quality of production.
For the first time available in English, this book by the late Professor Haruka Yanagisawa, who was a leading figure in the South Asia studies collective in Japan, is an important contribution to the academic tradition of economic history of India. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of social and economic history, sociology, anthropology and economies of South Asia.
Contents
Introduction: In Search of the Roots of Contemporary Economic Growth in India PART I: Stirrings of Economic Development: Moves after World War I 1. Agriculture in the Great Depression: Agricultural Production and Changes in Rural Society; 2. Growth in the Manufacturing Sector: Nationalist Movements, Import Substitution Industrialisation and a Multi-Tiered Labour Market; 3. The Growth of Small-Scale Enterprises and Changes in Consumption Patterns: A Prototype of Post-Independence Informal Sectors Part II: The Economic Development In Independent India: The Formation of a Foundation 4. State-Led Import-Substitution Industrialisation: Forming the Foundation for Further Economic Development; 5. Agrarian Development after Independence; 6. Changes in Rural Society, the Development of the Rural Economy and the Growth of Rural Markets Part III: Accelerated Growth and the Structure of the Indian Economy and Society 7. The Growth of Small-Scale and Informal-Sector Industries and the Production of Low-Cost Goods; 8. The Growth of the Service Sector and Socio-Economic Changes in Rural Society; 9. A Growing Connection between Rural Society and the Urban Informal Economy; 10. Economic Reforms and the Development of the Large-Scale Formal Sector; 11. The Structure of Indian Society and Economic Growth; Conclusion: Towards Further Development
