Synopses & Reviews
This is the first comprehensive and interpretative account of the history of economic growth and change in colonial and post-colonial India. Dr. Tomlinson draws together and expands on the specialist literature dealing with imperialism, development and underdevelopment, the historical processes of change in agriculture, trade and manufacture, and the relations among business, the economy and the state. What emerges is a picture of an economy in which some output growth and technical change occurred both before and after 1947, but in which a broadly based process of development has been constrained by structural and market imperfections. Tomlinson argues that India has thus had an underdeveloped economy, with weak market structures and underdeveloped institutions, which has since 1860 profoundly influenced the social, political and ecological history of South Asia.
Review
"Tomlinson's extremely competent book lays out the main strands of this new work (to which he has made his own significant contributions) and draws them together into a relatively coherent whole that is remarkably lucid and satisfyingly undoctrinaire." Morris David Morris, Economic Development and Cultural Change"...a book of interest not only to South Asianists but also, as Tomlinson points out, to anyone interested in a case study of the difficulties of achieving economic growth and the terrible penalties of misdirected economic policies....Tomlinson provides the reader with a sobering perspective." Blair B. Kling, American Historical Review"...Tomlinson's arguments...are always engaging...Tomlinson skillfully demonstrates the impact on India of periodic fluctuations in the world capitalist economy from 1824 to 1945 and believes these events largely determined the shape of modern India...required reading for any serious student of India's economy and India's place in development theory." Marc Jason Gilbert, Journal of Developing Areas
Synopsis
In the first comprehensive and wide-ranging account of the modern Indian economy, B. R. Tomlinson considers the history of economic growth and change over the last hundred years.
Synopsis
In this book, Dr. B. R. Tomlinson presents the first comprehensive and interpretative account of the history of economic growth and change in colonial and postcolonial India. He draws together and expands upon the specialist literature dealing with imperialism, development and underdevelopment, and the historical processes of change in agriculture, trade and manufacture, the relations among business, the economy and the state, including the process of planning after Independence and the coming of the "green revolution."
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: development and underdevelopment in colonial India; 2. Agriculture 1860-1950: land, labour and capital; 3. Trade and manufacture 1860-1945: firms, markets and the colonial state; 4. The state and the economy, 1939-1970: the emergence of economic management in India; 5. Conclusion.