Class- XII,

Book-2
Structural
Change
Ch-1
 Introduction

 Structural Change refers to the transformation in the

structure of a society. This type of change includes change in
the structure of social institutions or the rules by which they
are run.

 Structural changes are thus long term and permanent

changes.

 Structural processes of change due to a transformation in the

network of social relationships.

 Caste, Kinship, family and occupational groups constitute

some of the structural realities change in these relationships is
a structural change.
 Colonial experience for
comprehending modern India
 The colonial rule has had a tremendous impact on Indian
society in all aspects-railways, industries, postal system
(social, cultural, economic, political).
 Understanding of colonial experience while comprehending
modern India is of significant importance as many modern
ideas and institutions reached India through colonialism.

 This Chapter focuses on structural changes that colonialism

brought in.
 Colonialism brought into being new political, economic and
social structural changes.
 In this chapter we look at only two of these structural
changes namely industrialisation and urbanisation.
 UNDERSTANDING COLONIALISM
 Colonialism simply means the establishment of rule by one
country over another. In the modern period western
colonialism has had the greatest impact.

 India’s past has been marked by the entry of numerous

groups of people at different times who have established
their rule over different parts of what constitutes modern
India today.

 The impact of colonial rule is distinguishable from all other

earlier rules because the changes it brought in were far-
reaching and deep.

 History is full of examples of the annexation of foreign

territory and the domination of weaker by stronger powers.
There is a vital difference between the empire building of
pre-capitalist times and that of capitalist times.

The Pre- Capitalist Conquerors benefitted from their

domination by exacting continuous flow of tribute.

They didn’t interfere with the economic base.

According to Alavi and Shanin, 1982- told that Pre

capitalist simply took the tribute that was skimmed off
the economic surplus which was produced traditionally in
the subjugated areas.
• In contrast British colonialism which was based on a
capitalist system directly interfered to ensure greatest
profit and benefit to British capitalism.

• Every policy was geared towards the strengthening

and expansion of British capitalism. For instance it
changed the very laws of the land.
Forest Policy in the Colonial Period
in North-East India (BOX 1.1)

 The advent of the railways in Bengal …marked an

important turning point, which saw the conversion of its
forest policy in Assam (Assam was then part of the Bengal
province) from one of laissez faire into one of active
intervention.

 The demand for railway sleepers transformed the forests in

Assam (this included the entire present-day seven sister
states) from an unproductive wilderness into a lucrative
source of revenue for the colonial administration.

 Between 1861 and 1878, an area of approximately 269

square miles had been constituted as reserved forests.
 Railway
Sleepers
Forest Policy in the Colonial Period
in North-East India (BOX 1.1)

 By 1894, the area had gone up to 3,683 square miles. And,

by the end of the nineteenth century, the area of forests
under the department was 20,061 square miles
(constituting 42.2 per cent of the total area of the
province), of which 3,609 square miles comprised reserved
forests.

 Significantly, large areas of these forests are located in the

hill areas occupied by tribal communities who for centuries
depended upon and lived in close harmony with nature.
 Emergence of new class

 Colonialism also led to considerable movement of people.

 It led to movement of people from one part to another

within India. For instance people from present day
Jharkhand moved to Assam to work on the tea plantations.

 A newly emerging middle class particularly from the British

Presidency regions of Bengal and Madras moved as
government employees and professionals like doctors and
lawyers moved to different parts of the country.
 Problem faced by Colonialism

 People were carted in ships from India to work on other

colonised lands in distant Asia, Africa and Americas.

 Many died on their way. Most could never return. Today

many of their descendents are known as people of Indian
origin.

 Colonialism was a story apart in the very scale and

intensity of the changes that it brought about. Some of
these changes were deliberate while some took place in an
unintended fashion.

 For example we saw how western education was introduced

to create Indians who would manage British colonialism.
Instead it led to the growth of a nationalist and anti-colonial
consciousness.
 Capitalism

 Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of

production are privately owned and organised to
accumulate profits within a market system.

 Capitalism in the west emerged out of a complex process of

European exploration of the rest of the world, its plunder of
wealth and resources, an unprecedented growth of science
and technology, it’s harnessing to industries and
agriculture.

 Western colonialism was inextricably connected to the

growth of western capitalism that became the dominant
economic system.
 Nation- State as a dominant political
form

Nation state pertains to a particular type of state,

characteristic of the modern world.

A government has sovereign power within a defined territorial

area, and the people are citizens of a single nation.

Nation states are closely associated with the rise of

nationalism.

It is an important part of the rise of democratic ideas.

 Urbanisation and Industrialisation

The Colonial Experience

Two structural changes brought about by colonialism.

1) Industrialization

2) Urbanization
 Industrialisation
 It refers to emergence of machine production based on the
use of inanimate power resource like steam, or electricity.

 A prime feature of industrial societies today is that a large

majority of the employed population work in factories,
offices or shops rather than agriculture.

 Over 90 per cent of people in the west live in towns and

cities, where most jobs are to be found and new job
opportunities are created.

 Urbanisation and industrialisation often do occur together

but not always so.

 Britain was the first to undergo Industrialisation but In India

the impact of same British Industrialisation led to De-
industrialisation
 De-Industrialisation
It is a process of social and economic change caused by the
removal or reduction of industrial activity in a region.
Decline of old urban centres. Just as manufacturing boomed in
Britain, traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures
from India declined in the face of Manchester competition.

This period also saw the further decline of cities such as Surat
an Masulipatnam while Bombay and Madras grew.

The end of 19th century , with the installation of mechanised

factory industries, some towns became much more heavily
populated.
 The census of India Report, 1911- Box-
1.3

 The extensive importation of cheap European piece goods

and utensils and the establishment in India itself of
numerous factories of the western type, have more or less
destroyed many village industries.

 The high prices of agricultural produce have also led many

village artisans to abandon their hereditary craft in favour
of agriculture.
 Industrialisation is not just about new machine
based production but also a story of the growth of
new social groups in the society and the new
social relationships.

 It is about changes in the Indian social structure

 Box- 1.4

 The substitute offered by the East India Company and by

the British government were:
1) Land Ownership
2) Facilities for education in English

 The facts that the first remained unconnected with

agricultural productivity

 The second with the mainstream of Indian cultural

traditions show that the alternatives were not sufficient
that they couldn’t create any genuine middle class

 As the Zamindars become parasites in land and the

graduates job hunters
 Urbanisation and Industrialisation are
linked process
 Cities had a key role in the economic system of empires.
 Coastal cities like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were
developed for exporting new materials-cotton, jute, indigo,
coffee-and importing machine made goods from Britain
 Urbanisation in the colonial period saw the decline of some
earlier urban centres and the emergence of new colonial
cities.
 Kolkata was one of the first of such cities. In 1690, an
English merchant named Job Charnock arranged to lease
three villages (named Kolikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti)
by the river Hugli in order to set up a trading post.
 In 1698, Fort William was established by the river for
defensive purposes, and a large open area was cleared
around the fort for military engagements. The fort and the
open area (called Maidan) formed the core of the city that
emerged rather rapidly.
 Tea Plantation
 Undemocratic measures were used to get work done by the
workers, for the benefit of the 'British planters.

 The planters enjoyed lavish lifestyles.

 The workers worked under unjust contract and

unfavourable conditions.

 The planter and his family lived in huge bungalows

surrounded by an army of liveried servants.

 The workers were recruited from far off places and many
were injected with strange fevers.
 How were labourers recruited?
 Tea Industry began in India in 1851, Most of the tea gardens
were situated in Assam. In 1903, the industry employed
4,79,000 permanent and 93000 temporary employees.

 Since Assam was sparsely populated and the Tea plantation

were often located on uninhabited hillsides, bulk of the
sorely needed labour had to be imported from other
provinces.

 But to bring thousands of people every year from their far-

off homes into strange lands, possessing an unhealthy
climate and the infected with strange fevers, required the
provision of financial and other incentives, which the Tea-
planters of Assam were unwilling to offer.
 How were labourers recruited?

 Instead they had recourse to fraud and coercion and they

persuaded the government to aid and abet them in this
unholy task by passing penal laws.

 The recruitment of labourers for tea gardens of Assam was

carried on for years mostly by contractors under the
provisions of the Transport of native labourers Act (No.III) of
1863 of Bengal as amended in 1865, 1870 and 1873.
 From Curzon’s Speeches II,pp.238-
9(Box-1.7)

The Labour system in Assam was essentially that of indenture

by which the labourers went to Assam under contract for a
number of years.

The government helped the planters by providing for penal

sanction in case of non-fulfillment of the contract by the
labourers.
 From Curzon’s Speeches II,pp.238-
9(Box-1.7)
This view is explicitly made by T. Raleigh, Law Member, when
speaking on the Assam Labour and Emigration Bill of 1901:
“The labour-contract authorised by this Bill is a transaction by
which, to put it rather bluntly, a man is often committed to
Assam before he knows what he is doing and is there upon
held to his promise for four years, with a threat of arrest and
imprisonment if he fails to perform it. Conditions like these
have no place in the ordinary law of master and servant. We
made them part of the law of British India at the instance and
for the benefit of the planters, not the interest of the coolie. ”
 How did the planter’s live? (Box-1.8)
Parbatpuri had always been as important offloading and
loading point.

The doughty British managers and their mems always came

down from the estates surrounding Parbatpuri when a
steamer docked there.

In spite of the inaccessibility of the gardens, they had lived

lives of luxury. Huge, sprawling bunglows, set on sturdy
wooden stills to protect the inmates from wild animals, were
surrounded by velvety lawns and jewels bright flowers beds….

They had trained a large number of malis, bawarchis and

bearers to serve them to perfection. Their wide verandahed
houses gleamed and glistened under the ministrations of this
army of liveried servants.
 How did the planter’s live? (Box-1.8)
Of course , everything from scouring powder to self-raising
flour, from safety pins to silverware, from delicate Nottingham
lace tablecloths to bath salts, had come up the river on the
steamers. Indeed, even the large cast-iron bathtubs that were
invitingly placed in huge bathrooms, tubs which were filled
every morning by busy bistiwallahs carrying buckets up from
the bungalows’s well, had been brought up via steamer.
Industrialisation in Independent India
 For Indian nationalists the issue of economic exploitation
under colonial rule was a central issue.
 The Swadeshi movement strengthened the loyalty to the
national economy.
 Modern ideas made people realise that poverty was
preventable. Indian nationalists saw rapid industrialisation
of the economy as the path towards both growth and social
equity.

 Development of heavy and machine making industries

 Expansion of public sector
 Development of a large cooperative sector.
 Box-1.9
 A National Planning committee of 1938 was set up with
Jawaharlal Nehru as the Chairman and KT Shah as the
General Editor. The Committee started functioning in 1939,
but it could not make much headway as the chairman was
arrested by the British and the war broke out.

 Notwithstanding these obstacles, 29 sub-committees

divided into eight groups were set up to deal with all
aspects of national life and to work in accordance with a
predetermined plan.
 Box-1.9
The major areas of focus were.
 Agriculture and other sources of primary production
 Industries or other secondary sources of production.
 Human factor, labour and population
 Exchange and finance.
 Public utilities, transport and communication
 Social services, health and housing
 Education-general and technical.
 Women's role in a planned economy.
Among sub-commitees, some submitted their final reports and
several others interim reports before India became
independent. Several reports were published by 1948-49.
The Planning commission was set up in March 1950 by the
resolution of the Government of India.
 Urbanisation in Independent India
 Writing on the different kinds of urbanisation witnesses in
the first two decades after independence sociologist M.S.A
Rao argued that in India many villages all over India are
becoming increasingly subject to the impact of Urban
influences.

 But according to him ,the nature of Urban impact varies

according to the kind of relations a village has with a city
or town.

 He describes 3 different situations of Urban impact

Three different situation of Urban impact

Box-1.10
1) There are villages in which a sizeable number of
people have sought employment to far- off cities.
 They live there leaving behind the members of their
families in their natal villages.

 There are number of emigrants reside not only in Indian

cities but also in overseas towns.

 For ex-, there are many overseas migrants from Gujarat

villages living in African and British towns.

 They have built fashionable houses in their natal village,

invested money on land and industry, and have donated
literally to the establishment of educational institutions and
trusts.
Three different situation of Urban impact

Box-1.10
2) The second kind of urban impact is to be seen in villages
which are situated near an industrial town.

 When an industrial town like Bhilai comes up in the midst of

villages, some villages are totally uprooted while the
lands of others are partially acquired.

 The later are found to receive an influx of immigrant

workers, which are not only stimulates a demand for
houses and a market inside the village but creates
problems of ordering relationships between the native
residents and the immigrants.
Three different situation of Urban impact

Box-1.10
3) The growth of metropolitan cities accounts for the third
type of urban impact on the surrounding villages…

While a few villages are totally absorbed in the process of

expansion only the land of many others, excluding the
inhabited area, is used for urban development.