During mid-18th century, Bengal in India spun roughly 85 million pounds of cotton per year, as opposed to Britain’s 3 million (Allen, 33). A decade later, technological advances like the spinning jennies, Arkwright’s water frame, and Samuel Crompton’s mule were all aimed to mechanize …show more content…
Centuries later, India finally experienced industrial development. With the financial help from British investors, the jute and cotton industries grew successfully. The cotton industry flourished in Bombay in 1913, where “it was processing 360,000 tons of raw cotton per year – more than France but less than Germany” (Allen, 62). Even with such success, the impact on the national economy was negligible since employment in the jute and cotton industry only amounted to half a million people, which is well under 1% of the labor force. Furthermore, this process has also brought foreign investments from rich countries to invest in developing countries where they have much more natural resources and lower labor cost. India’s economy continued to stagnate due to lack of transportation systems like the railways. Railways were deemed to aid industries “by using tariffs and procurement requirements to channel orders to local firms” (Allen, 63). However, colonial government always channeled these orders to British firms rather than India’s as a way to sustain their own high-wage