Industrial development in India has been part of the very broad movement which had its origins in Western Europe. Before the more productive technology of the industrializing West could become something other than a casual and accidental feature of the Indian landscape, a larger scale of market demand had to emerge and new ways of organizing economic activity had to be created. Entrepreneurs had to concern themselves with a larger range of calculations, novel forms of enterprise had to be created and labour had to be mobilized to a different discipline. This chapter will describe the growth of India's modern industries, the forms within which they developed and the character of the labour force that emerged.

The new steam-powered technology was introduced fairly early into south Asia and the pace of its extension within specific sectors was reasonably brisk. Between the 1850s, when the first major industries started, and 1914, India had created the world's largest jute manufacturing industry, the fourth- or fifth-largest cotton textile industry (depending on what is being measured), and the third-largest railway network. Karl Marx, writing at the beginning of this process, expected that the introduction of railways and modern factories into India would rapidly transform the sub-continent. He was excessively optimistic. Modern industrial processes did not spread easily from sector to sector and the total effect was not cumulative. At the time of Independence, India was still largely non-industrial and one of the world's poorest areas.