Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830–1980

Description

Colonialism brought in its train forms of technology that transformed rural Indian society. With Calcutta as the hub, colonial Bengal became the gateway of technology transmission to other parts of the country and the rural countryside. While this technology had led to industrialization in the Western world, it had variable effects in India. On the one hand, it flowed through corporate bodies and individual enterprises and on the other it resulted in greater British control and impoverishment of the rural society. The impact of technology induction in India has remained largely unexplored while its significance as a means of colonial control has often been discussed. This book, a social history of technology, analyses the context and results of technology induction to the villages, such as the railways redrawing the morphology of rural settlement, the new tools leading to empowerment of artisans or their dispossession due to mechanization. With an aim to trace the interrelationship between technology and village society, the author has looked beyond official archives and used rare local-level sources. Blending socio-economic data with folk usage, oral traditions, songs, and sayings, the book integrates the local, national, and global into a historical analysis of the spread of technology in the colonial context.