commercialization of agriculture

TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Commercialization of Agriculture,
Great Depression and Famine in
Colonial India
25th September, 2014

Submitted by: Vibha Ashok Bhirud
M2013DS046
Submitted to: Prof. Aparajita Bakshi
Prof. Gaurang Sahay

School of Development Studies

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Industrialization

in

Europe

and

Commercialization

of

Agriculture in India
3. Impact of Commercialization on Indian Agriculture
4. Great Depression and Indian Agriculture
5. Famine: Indian Agriculture strained by commercialization and
Great Depression
6. Conclusion
7. References

Introduction
The British rule had pronounced and profound economic impact on India. The various economic policies followed by the British led to the rapid transformation of India 's economy into a colonial economy whose nature and structure were determined by needs of the British economy. One important aspect of British economic policy was commercialization of agriculture.
Commercialization of agriculture which can be defined as a process where peasants start producing primarily for sale in distant markets, rather than to meet their own need for food or to sell in local markets, (Roy, 2007) has taken place at different times in response to different stimuli. In the Indian context though a number of commercial crops such as cotton, tobacco and sugarcane were grown fairly extensively even before the advent of British rule (Habib, 1982), since land revenue had to be paid mostly in cash and the prices of these crops were much higher at that time relative to the prices of foodgrains, however, commercialization of agriculture at that time corresponded only to the requirements of traditional ‗revenue economy‘ in which the main form of revenue payable happened to be an indistinguishable mix of tax, tribute and rent (Raj,
1985).
No doubt the need to pay revenue in cash was the initial compelling force for the marketing of
agricultural

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