SMALL-SCALE AND COTTAGE INDUSTRY, 1800–1947

SMALL-SCALE AND COTTAGE INDUSTRY, 1800–1947 In 1800 India had a diversified manufacturing base, employing a significant proportion of the workforce. Textile production was the leading sector, and the weaving of cotton cloth by India's village artisans was a universal occupation. When cloth was produced for the village or local markets, the weavers sold the cloth directly to consumers. In such cases, the capital requirement was low, and the costs of preparatory processes, like spinning and preparation of yarn, were internalized through the labor of the nonweaving members of the household, usually women and children. The organization and relations of production were far more complex when cloth was produced on a commercial scale to produce finer textiles which catered to distant markets, especially for export. Even the preparatory processes of cleaning and carding the cotton were done by specialized workers, and spinning was a distinct and skilled occupation that provided employment to millions of women.

The hinterlands of the three major cloth exporting coastal areas—Gujarat, Coromandel, and Bengal—were best known for their textiles. But textiles were produced for external markets in many other parts of the country. Weaving remained largely a rural activity, though small towns and even larger cities also had a small population of weavers. The location of weaving itself was less relevant than the markets for which their products were intended, which were predominantly urban and upper-income classes. Weaving was a full-time occupation in most regions. The exception was Bengal and northeastern India, where weavers alternated between cloth production and agriculture. Weaving was also a caste-dominated activity that was carried out by various subcastes of weavers; caste performed a role similar to guilds, providing organizational unity for each activity.

A noteworthy feature of textile production in India was the seemingly endless variety of plain and patterned fabrics produced in every region. Plain, or solid-colored, fabrics were produced in coarse, medium, and fine textures. Patterned fabrics were produced both on the loom, or by using complex dyeing, painting, and printing techniques on woven cloth. The dyeing of cotton was, in fact, India's unique specialty. Because cotton did not absorb dyes directly to achieve a permanent color, Indian dyers used a variety of mordants, resists, astringents, and other products in conjunction with dyes in order to fix a permanent color to the cloth. Since many dyes were derived from plants, the cultivation of dye crops was an added supporting activity in textile production. With this extensive range of plain, dyed, and patterned cloth, India supplied the textile requirements of most of the world.

Production on a commercial scale, however, increased the requirement of working capital, particularly for purchasing yarn in the market. This capital was provided by merchant capitalists, who played a pivotal role in pre-modern trading. They advanced working capital to the weavers, usually secured against future deliveries of cloth. For the merchant, this negated a major uncertainty on the supply side by securing a large enough stock of cloth from many individual weavers. The merchant also provided the interface between distant markets and the weavers, ensuring a flow of information on the market so that production could be adjusted to consumer preferences.

The unit of production for this large volume of output was still the weaver, working from home on his own loom. The tools and equipment tended to be rudimentary and the techniques, especially of spinning and dyeing, required a great deal of time. The key factors in maintaining a high level of quality and performance were the highly developed manual skills of the workers, and the empirically evolved intricate techniques of all processes. In such a system, the notions of productivity and wages related to productivity had little relevance. Though data on wages are sketchy, it is evident that wages were by and large pegged to subsistence levels. Low wages were partly the result of controls exercised by the merchants over the weavers, who had no direct access to the market. Textile production was characterized by a high ratio of net output to fixed capital and a low share of wages in the final price.

In crafts like ornamental metalware, master craftsmen worked with apprentices in workshops, which were usually located in urban administrative centers. Since the products were primarily intended for local elite and ruling classes, there were no uncertainties regarding the market or consumer preference, nor were the products traded to distant markets.

Impact of Colonialism

The impact of colonialism on Indian industry has been much debated, but the most widespread view was that the invidious policies of the British colonial government, aimed at protecting the interests of domestic industries in Britain, had destroyed India's handicraft manufactures, especially textiles. This "nationalist view" was first articulated by R. C. Dutt, who also stressed that, in this process, India was transformed from an exporter of manufactured goods to an exporter of raw materials, with most of its population forced into subsistence agriculture for survival. Further, Marxist theories of the world capitalist system cite India as a prime example of the process by which colonized economies were relegated to raw material production to feed the development of the capitalist center. Even where traditional manufacturing survived, this was possible only with the use of zero cost household labor and when the producer depressed his own wages to compete with the cheaper imported goods.

A contending school of thought, which argued that traditional Indian industry had declined because it was unable to compete with mechanized production, was too simplistic, ignoring the unequal power relations that were inherent in colonialism.

Survival of Handicrafts

The incontrovertible evidence of the viable functioning of many crafts, especially hand-loom weaving, well into the twentieth century has led to a reassessment that seeks to understand the dynamics of survival of artisanal industry and the complex processes of adjustment to the forces of rapidly changing technology and improvements in transportation and communications. The latter integrated India's economy into the global economy at a time when costs were declining internationally.

The sector that was most vulnerable to these forces was the highly export-oriented indigenous textile sector, which had to compete with cheaper cloth in domestic as well as export markets. The general consensus is that textile production did decline during the first half of the nineteenth century, but this impact was both region and product specific, and Bengal as a region and a whole array of medium quality fabrics produced for export were the most affected. However, there was no noticeable decline in the volume of output in most regions.

Until about 1870, hand-spun yarn was still being used extensively, but imports of machine-spun yarn eventually wiped out hand spinning in India, with the resultant loss of employment and income for millions of women. The introduction of chemical dyes toward the end of the nineteenth century similarly pushed out traditional vegetable dyeing techniques. Hand-loom weaving and production of patterned cloth survived, however, by switching to the more cost-effective, though not necessarily better, inputs.

More reliable data are available from 1870 onward. Between 1881 and 1931, the proportion of male workers in industry declined, which happened not merely in textiles, but in many other activities. At the same time, real income per worker rose steadily, indicating that productivity-enhancing technology was being adopted in the crafts, and that nonviable workers were forced to shift to other occupations.

In all crafts, there was a distinct preference for maintaining production within a small, artisanal firm. Imported inputs and new technologies were adopted within the economic rationale of small-scale production. In textiles, a richer class of weavers was emerging, many of whom turned to trade or became entrepreneurs. Such entrepreneurs set up small-scale hand-loom workshops in urban centers in southern and western parts of India. More significant in the long term was the setting up of small power-loom manufactories in towns in western India. Weavers migrated to work in these workshops, shifting from self-employment to wage employment.

The individual weaver, however, remained the mainstay of hand-loom weaving and adjusted to the new macroeconomic environment. The most important reason for the survival of hand-loom cloth was the strong domestic demand for traditional dress materials, designs, and patterns, none of which could be produced through mechanical processes. But the weavers also responded to changing market preferences, producing new fabrics, weaving with silk and manmade yarns, and gradually adopting new technologies, which were economically viable in hand-loom weaving.

Though the Indian mill industry dated back to the 1870s, it did not really compete with the hand looms until the 1920s. The hand-loom sector responded by shifting to higher value products in which it had an advantage. The major problem for hand-loom weaving during the 1930s and 1940s was the shortage of yarn. Weavers had to depend on middlemen merchants for credit to buy yarn and entered into highly disadvantageous tied transactions, which ultimately forced a high percentage of weavers into a debt trap, raising fears about the future of hand-loom weaving.

Kanakalatha Mukund

See alsoLarge-Scale Industry, 1850–1950 ; Textiles: Block-Printed ; Textiles: Early Painted and Printed

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gadgil, D. R. The Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times, 1860–1939. 5th ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1971. A modern classic on economic transformation in the late colonial period.

Government of India, Fact Finding Committee (Handlooms and Mills). Report. Delhi: GOI, 1942.

Haynes, Douglas. "The Dynamics of Continuity in Indian Domestic Industry: Jari Manufacture in Surat, 1900–47." Indian Economic and Social History Review 33, no. 2 (1986): 127–149. Studies the dynamics of an input in textile production.

Mukund, Kanakalatha. "Indian Textile Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Structure, Organisation and Responses." Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 32 (1992): 2057–2065. Primarily focuses on indigenous techniques in various processes of textile production, and the responses to the changing economic environment.

Roy, Tirthankar. Artists and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. A detailed statistical study of the textile industry in the first half of the twentieth century.

——. Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. An unusual study of various nontextile handicrafts between 1870 and 1930.

Roy, Tirthankar, ed. Cloth and Commerce. New Delhi: Sage, 1996. Collection of articles reprinted from the Indian Economic and Social History Review on the history of the textile industry. The articles by Konrad Specker, Hanaru Yanagisawa, and Sumit Guha dealing with the experience of some textile-producing regions in the first half of the nineteenth century are of special interest.