Due to British colonial rule, there was Deindustrialisation of colonial India during the first half of the nineteenth century. India was severely disadvantaged by the benefits of the industrial revolution. Deindustrialisation is the phenomenon of phased reduction or degradation of a nation’s or region’s industrial capacity. It is a type of economic change in which employment in the manufacturing sector declines for a variety of economic or political reasons. The term “Indian Economic Deindustrialisation” refers to a period of decline in industrial-based activities in the Indian economy that lasted from 1757 to 1947. Traditional handicraft industries began to decline in the 18th century and continued to decline rapidly until the beginning of the 19th century. 

An Overview

• The Britishers held it primarily agrarian in order to secure cheap raw materials for British industries and to take advantage of a ready market in India for British industrially produced goods. Deindustrialization has been used to describe the entire process.
• There was a disappearance of Indigenous courts that patronized handicrafts and regularly employed craftspeople.
• The Indian handicraft industries suffered greatly as a result of deindustrialization. Ruins of handicrafts led to the decline of industries, which led to unemployment and extreme poverty in the country.
• The British conquest resulted in the country’s deindustrialization and increased reliance on agriculture.
• There are no figures for the earlier period, but according to Census Reports, the percentage of the population dependent on agriculture increased from 63.7 percent in 1901 to 70 percent in 1941.
• One of the major causes of India’s extreme poverty under British rule was the increasing pressure on agriculture.
• In fact, India was now an agricultural colony of manufacturing Britain, which needed it for raw materials for its industries. Nowhere was the transformation more visible than in the cotton textile industry.
• While India had been the world’s largest exporter of cotton goods for centuries, it was now an importer of British cotton products and an exporter of raw cotton.