Structural Change — Class 12 Sociology

Understanding modern India requires grasping its colonial past, because colonialism brought far-reaching structural changes and exposed Indians to modern ideas in contradictory ways — they read of liberalism and freedom while living under foreign rule. Colonialism is not merely one country ruling another; British colonialism, rooted in capitalism, directly interfered with the economic base, changing land laws, deciding which crops could be grown, opening forests and passing Forest Acts that uprooted pastoralists. It also moved people — within India to plantations, and overseas as indentured labour. Capitalism, an economic system of privately owned production organised for profit within a market, and the nation-state, the dominant political form, accompanied colonial rule; the contradiction between colonial rule and the principle of nationalism fuelled the freedom struggle. The chapter focuses on two structural changes: industrialisation (machine production using inanimate power) and urbanisation. In the West industrialisation and urbanisation went together, but in India the same British industrialisation produced de-industrialisation — the decline of handloom and old urban centres like Surat and Murshidabad — while colonial port cities like Bombay, Madras and Calcutta grew as links between the British core and the Indian periphery. The tea plantations of Assam show how the colonial state used penal laws and coercion to supply labour. After Independence the Indian state actively promoted industrialisation and the country has continued to urbanise.