UPSC Prelims 2020 · Question 43 of 100
UPSC Prelims 2020 question on Industrial Revolution Impact India
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2020
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicEconomic Policies of British
- DifficultyMedium
- TypeDirect
Which of the following statements correctly explain the impact of Industrial Revolution on India during the first half of the nineteenth century?
Show answer
Answer: A. Indian handicrafts were ruined.
Verdict
Correct answer: Indian handicrafts were ruined → Option (a).
Analysis
India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market.
Cotton industries developed in England during the Industrial Revolution. Industrial groups pressurised the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without facing competition from outside. Simultaneously, industrialists persuaded the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets. Exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically in the early nineteenth century.
Cotton weavers in India faced two problems at the same time — their export market collapsed, and the local market shrank, being glutted with Manchester imports. Produced by machines at lower costs, imported cotton goods were so cheap that weavers could not compete. By the 1850s, reports from most weaving regions of India narrated stories of decline and desolation.
Statement by statement
Option (a) – CORRECT: Indian handicrafts, especially textiles, were ruined in the first half of the 19th century.
Option (b) – INCORRECT: Machines were introduced in the Indian textile industry only in the second half of the 19th century (first cotton mill set up in Bombay in 1854).
Option (c) – INCORRECT: Railway lines were laid only from 1853 onwards (first railway line: Bombay to Thane, 1853) — not in the first half of the century.
Option (d) – INCORRECT: Heavy duties were imposed on British manufactures only after independence and tariff reforms post-1917, not in the first half of the 19th century.
Extra UPSC info
Deindustrialisation thesis — Cheap and machine-made imports flooded the Indian market after the Charter Act of 1813 allowing one-way free trade. Result: Ruin of artisans, decline of urban handicraft centres like Dacca, Murshidabad, Surat. R.C. Dutt and Dadabhai Naoroji were key economic nationalists who critiqued this.