Industrialization and sectoral imbalance: Coal mining and the theory of dualism in Colonial and independent India

Abstract

Zamindars, Mines and Peasants. Studies in the History of an Indian Coalfield and its Rural Hinterland, edited by D. Rothermund and D.C. Wadhwa. Delhi: Manohar, 1978. Pp. 236. Rs. 60.

Urban Growth and Rural Stagnation, edited by D. Rothermund, E. Kropp and G. Dienemann. Delhi: Mahohar, 1980. Pp. 493. Rs. 150.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the history and present condition of specific Indian industries. This is especially true for the coalmining sector. The volumes under review attempt to correct this absence by focussing on the formation and development of the vast Dhanbad mining complex. In so doing they reveal a past and a present founded on crude plunder of natural resources, dispossession of tribal land‐holders and the dominance of ‘external’ capital. However, the definition of this dominance, its effects and implications are examined within the idiom of a dualist theory of economic dynamics. This gives rise to a number of problems.

Notes

Cambridge University