Nana Sahib was refused pension, as he was the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao I.
Rani Laxmi Bai's adopted son was not recognized by the East India Company as the heir to Jhansi.
Bahadur Shah's successor was denied the right to live at the Red Fort.
Economic Causes: Heavy taxation, evictions, discriminatory tariff policy against Indian products, destruction of traditional handicrafts.
Military Discrimination: Discrimination between the Indian and the British soldiers.
Religious Discrimination: The introduction of Enfield rifle, the cartridge of which was greased with animal fat, provided the spark.
On March 29, 1857, a soldier named Mangal Pandey attacked and fired at his senior at Barrackpur in Bengal (in 19th and 34th Native infantry).
Mutiny spread throughout UP along with some other parts of the country.
Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II was proclaimed the Emperor of India.
Causes of Failure of the Revolt: Lack of planning, organization and leadership.
Some Indians supported the British in suppressing the revolt as Scindia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Raja of Jodhpur, the Nawab of Bhopal, the rulers of Patiala, Sindh and Kashmir and the Rana of Nepal.
The revolt was mainly feudal in character carrying with it some nationalist elements.
The control of Indian administration was passed on to the British crown by the Government of India Act, 1858.
After the revolt, the British pursued the policy of Divide and Rule.
A Brief Survey of the Major Centres of the Revolt of 1857
Centre
Leaders
British Officials who suppressed the Revolt
Fate of the Leader
Delhi
Bahadur Shah, Gen- eral Bakht Khan of Bareilly regiment
Raja Rammohan Roy established the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828 in order to purify Hinduism and to preach monotheism.
He established the Atmiya Sabha in 1815.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy is most remembered for helping Lord William Bentinck to declare the practice of Sati a punishable offence in 1829.
Henry Vivian Derozio was the founder of the Young Bengal Movement.
The Arya Samaj was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati at Bombay in 1875:
He believed the Vedas were the source of true knowledge. His motto. Was "Back to the Vedas".
He was against idol worship, child marriage and caste system based on birth.
The first Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) School was founded in 1886 at Lahore.
The Prarthana Samaj was founded in 1867 in Bombay by Atmaram Pandurang.
The original name of Swami Vivekananda was Narendranath Dutta [1863-1902).
He was famous disciple of Shri Ramkrishna Paramahamsa.
Swami Vivekananda participated at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago [USA) in September 1893 and raised the prestige of India and Hinduism very high.
The Theosophical Society was founded in New York [USA) in 1875 by Madam H.P. Blavatsky, a Russian lady, and Henry Steel Olcott, an American colonel.
Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar helped J.D. Bethune to establish the Bethune School.
Jyotiba Phule founded the Satyashodak Samaj In 1873.
The Aligarh Movement was started by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan [1817- 98) for the social and educational advancement of the Muslims in India.
Baba Dayal Das founded the Nirankari Movement.
The Namdhari Movement was founded by Baba Ram Singh.
The Indian National Congress was founded on 28 December 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume.
The first meeting was scheduled to be held in Pune but due to a plague outbreak there, the meeting was later shifted to Bombay.
Womesh Chandra (W.C.) Bonnerjee was the first President of the INC.
The first session of the INC was held from 28-31 December 1885, and was attended by 72 delegates.
The decision to effect the Partition of Bengal was announced in July 1905 by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon.
The partition took place in 16 October 1905 and separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas.
Bengal was reunited in 1911.
Surat Split is mainly known for separation of Congress partymen into moderates and extremists at the Surat session of Congress in 26 December 1907.
The extremists were led by Lokmanya Tilak, Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal, and the Moderates were led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pheroze Shah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee.
The divided Congress re-united in the crucial Lucknow session of Congress in 1916.
The Indian Councils Act 1909, commonly known as the Morley-Minto Reforms, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that brought about a limited increase in the involvement of Indians in the governance of British India.
The act was formulated by John Morley, secretary of state for India (1905-10).
Lord Minto was the Viceroy of India [1905-10).
The Act amended the Indian Councils Acts of 1861 and 1892.
The Swadeshi movement started with the partition of Bengal by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, 1905.
It was the most successful of the pre-Gandhian movements. Its chief architects were Aurobindo Ghosh, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, V 0. Chidambaram Pillai, Babu Genu.
The All-India Muslim League was founded on 30 December 1906.
The founding president of Ghadar Party was Sohan Singh Bhakna and Lala Hardayal was the co-founder of this party.
The members of this party were the immigrant Sikhs of US and Canada.
In 1914, after the Komagata Maru tragedy, Lala Hardayal fled to Europe following an arrest by the United States government for spreading anarchist literature.
In 1916, two Home Rule Movements were launched in the country: one under the leadership of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the other under Annie Besant.
The objectives of the Home Rule League were: Establishment of self-government for India in British Empire,
Lucknow Pact, [December 1916), agreement made by the Indian National Congress headed by Maratha leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the All-India Muslim more...
Food security means availability, accessibility and affordability of food to all people at all times.
The poor households are more vulnerable to food insecurity whenever there is a problem of production or distribution of food crops.
Food security depends on the Public Distribution System (PDS) and government vigilance and action at times, when this security is threatened.
Food is as essential for living as air is for breathing. But food security means something more than getting two square meals.
Food security has following dimensions :
availability of food means food production within the country, food imports and the previous years stock stored in government granaries.
accessibility means food is within reach of every person.
affordability implies that an individual has enough money to buy sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet one's dietary needs.
Thus, food security is ensured in a country only if:
enough food is available for all the persons,
all persons have the capacity to buy food of acceptable quality, and
there is no barrier on access to food.
Why Food Security?
The poorest section of the society might be food insecure most of the times while persons above the poverty line might also be food insecure when the country faces a nation;
disaster/calamity like earthquake, drought, flood, tsunami, widespread failure of crop causing famine, etc.
How is food security affected during a calamity? Due to a natural calamity, say drought, total production of foodgrains decreases. It creates a shortage of food in the affected areas. Due to shortage of food, the prices goes up.
At the high prices, some people cannot afford to buy food. If such calamity happens in a very wide spread area or is stretched over a longer time period, it may cause a situation of starvation. A massive starvation might take a turn of famine.
A Famine is characterised by wide spread deaths due to starvation and epidemics cause by forced use of contaminated water or decaying food and loss of body resistance due to weakening from starvation.
The most devastating famine that occurred in India was the Famine of Bengal in 1943. This famine killed thirty lakh people in the province of Bengal.
Nothing like the Bengal Famine has happened in India again. But it is disturbing to note that even today, there are places like Kalahandi and Kashipur in Orissa where famine- like conditions have been existing for many years and where some starvation deaths have also been reported.
Starvation deaths are also reported in Baran district of Rajasthan, Palamau district of Jharkhand and many other remote areas during the recent years. Therefore, food more...
The idea of development or progress has always been with us. We have aspirations or desires about what we would like to do and how we would like to live.
Similarly, we have ideas about what a country should be like. What are the essential things that we require?
Can life be better for all? How should people live together? Can there be more equality? Development involves thinking about these questions and about the ways in which we can work towards achieving these goals.
Do all of these persons have the same notion of development or progress? Most likely not. Each one of them seeks different things. They seek things that are most important for them, i.e., that which can fulfil their aspirations or desires.
In fact, at times, two persons or groups of persons may seek things which are conflicting A girl expects as much freedom and opportunity as her brother, and that he also shares in the household work. Her brother may not like this.
Similarly, to get more electricity, industrialists may want more dams. But this may submerge the land and disrupt the lives of people who are displaced - such as tribals. They might resent this and may prefer small check dams or tanks to irrigate their land.
So, two things are quite clear : one, different persons can have different development goals and two, what may be development for one may not be development for the other It may even be destructive for the other.
Income and other Goals
If we go over Table on the next page, we will notice one common thing: what people desire are regular work, better wages, and decent price for their crops or other products that they produce. In other words, they want more income.
Besides seeking more income, one way or the other, people also seek things like equal. treatment, freedom, security, and respect of others. They resent discrimination. All these are important goals.
In fact, in some cases, these may be more important than more income or more consumption because material goods are not all that we need to live.
Money, or material things that one can buy with it, is one factor on which our life depends. But the quality of our life also depends on non-material things mentioned above
If it is not obvious to us, then just think of the role of our friends in our life. We may desire their friendship.
Similarly, there are many things that are not easily measured but they mean a lot to our lives. These are often ignored. However, it will be wrong to conclude that what cannot be measured is not important.
The economic development that we have achieved so far has come at a very heavy price-at the cost of environmental quality. As we step into an era of globalisation that promises higher economic growth, we have to bear in mind the adverse consequences of the past development path on our environment and consciously choose a path of sustainable development.
To understand the unsustainable path of development that we have taken and the challenges of sustainable development, we have to first understand the significance and contribution of environment to economic development.
Environment: Definition and Functions
Environment is defined as the total planetary inheritance and the totality of all resources. It includes all the biotic and abiotic factors that influence each other.
While all living elements-the birds, animals and plants, forests, fisheries etc. are biotic elements, abiotic elements include air, water, land etc.
Rocks and sunlight are all examples of abiotic elements of the environment. A study of the environment then calls for a study of the interrelationship between these biotic and abiotic components of the environment.
Functions of the environment: The environment performs four vital functions:
it supplies resources: resources here include both renewable and non-renewable resources.
Renewable resources are those which can be used without the possibility of the resource becoming depleted or exhausted. That is, a continuous supply of resource remains available. Examples of renewable resources are the trees the forests and the fishes in the ocean.
Non-renewable resources, on the other hand, are those which get exhausted with extraction and use, for example, fossil fuel.
it assimilates waste,
it sustains life by providing genetic and bio diversity, and
it also provides aesthetic services like scenery etc.
The environment is able to perform these functions without any interruption as long as the demand on these functions is within its carrying capacity.
This implies that the resource extraction is not above the rate of regeneration of the resource and the wastes generated are within the assimilating capacity of the environment.
When this is not so, the environment fails to perform its third and vital function of life sustenance and this results in an environmental crisis.
This is the situation today all over the world. The rising population of the developing countries and the affluent consumption and production standards of the developed world have placed a huge stress on the environment in terms of its first two functions.
Many resources have become extinct and the wastes generated are beyond the absorptive capacity of the environment.
Absorptive capacity means the ability of the environment to absorb degradation. The result - we are today at the threshold more...
There are many activities that are undertaken by directly using natural resources.
Take, for example, the cultivation of cotton. It takes place within a crop season. For the growth of the cotton plant, we depend mainly, but not entirely, on natural factors like rainfall, sunshine and climate. The product of this activity, cotton, is a natural product.
Similarly, in the case of an activity like dairy, we are dependent on the biological process of the animals and availability of fodder etc. The product here, milk, also is a natural product.
Similarly, minerals and ores are also natural products. When we produce a good by exploiting natural resources, it is an activity of the primary sector.
Why primary? This is because it forms the base for all other products that we subsequently make. Since most of the natural products we get are from agriculture, dairy, fishing, forestry, this sector is also called agriculture and related sector.
The secondary sector covers activities in which natural products are changed into other forms through ways of manufacturing that we associate with industrial activity.
It is the next step after primary. The product is not produced by nature but has to be made and therefore some process of manufacturing is essential. This could be in a factory, a workshop or at home.
For example, using cotton fibre from the plant, we spin yam and weave cloth. Using sugarcane as a raw material, we make sugar or gur. We convert earth into bricks and use bricks to make houses and buildings.
Since this sector gradually became associated with the different kinds of industries that came up, it is also called as industrial sector.
Tertiary sector is different from the above two. These are activities that help in the development of the primary and secondary sectors. These activities, by themselves, do not produce a good but they are an aid or a support for the production process.
For example, goods that are produced in the primary or secondary sector would need to be transported by trucks or trains and then sold in wholesale and retail shops.
At times, it may be necessary to store these in godowns. We also may need to talk to others over telephone or send letters (communication) or borrow money from banks (banking) to help production and trade.
Transport, storage, communication, banking, trade are some examples of tertiary activities. Since these activities generate services rather than goods, the tertiary sector is also called the service sector.
Service sector also includes some essential services that may not directly help in the production of goods. For example, we require teachers, doctors, and those who provide personal services such as washer men, barbers, cobblers, lawyers, and people to do administrative and more...
Low Level of Economic Development Under the Colonial Rule
The sole purpose of the British colonial rule in India was to reduce the country to being a raw material supplier for Great Britain's own rapidly expanding modem industrial base.
India had an independent economy before the advent of the British rule. Though agriculture was the main source of livelihood for most people, yet, the country's economy was characterised by various kinds of manufacturing activities.
India was particularly well known for its handicraft industries in the fields of cotton and silk textiles, metal and precious stone works etc.
The economic policies pursued by the colonial government in India were concerned more with the protection and promotion of the economic interests of their home country than with the development of the Indian economy.
Such policies brought about a fundamental change in the structure of the Indian economy - transforming the country into supplier of raw materials and consumer of finished industrial products from Britain.
Obviously, the colonial government never made any sincere attempt to estimate India's national and per capita income. Some individual attempts which were made to measure such incomes yielded conflicting and inconsistent results.
Among the notable estimators - Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, Findlay Shirras, V.K.R.V. Rao and R.C. Desai - it was Rao, whose estimates during the colonial period was considered very significant.
However, most studies did find that the country's growth of aggregate real output during the first half of the twentieth century was less than two per cent coupled with a meagre half per cent growth in per capita output per year.
Textile industry in bengal
Muslin is a type of cotton textile which had its origin in Bengal, particularly, places in and around Dhaka (spelled during the pre-independence period as Dacca), now the capital city of Bangladesh.
'Daccai Muslin' had gained worldwide fame as an exquisite type of cotton textile.
The finest variety of muslin was called malmal. Sometimes, foreign travelers also used to refer to it as malmal shahi or malmal khas implying that it was worn by, or fit for, the royalty.
Agricultural Sector
India's economy under the British colonial rule remained fundamentally agrarian - about 85 per cent of the country's population lived mostly in villages and derived livelihood directly or indirectly from agriculture.
However, despite being the occupation of such a large population, the agricultural sector continued to experience stagnation and, not infrequently, unusual deterioration,
Agricultural productivity became low though, in absolute terms, the sector experienced some growth due to the expansion of the aggregate area under cultivation,
This stagnation in the agricultural sector was caused mainly because of the various systems more...
The leaders of independent India had to ecide, among other things, the type of economic system most suitable for our nation, a system which would promote the welfare of all rather than a few.
There are different types of economic systems and among them, socialism appealed to Jawaharlal Nehru the most. However, he was not in favour of the kind of socialism established in the former Soviet Union where all the means of production, i.e. all the factories and farms in the country, were owned by the government. There was no private property.
Nehru, and many other leaders and thinkers of the newly independent India, sought an alternative to the extreme versions of capitalism and socialism.
Basically sympathising with the socialist outlook, they found the answer in an economic system which, in their view, combined the best features of socialism without its drawbacks.
In this view, India would be a socialist society with a strong public sector but also with private property and democracy; the government would plan for the economy with the private sector being encouraged to be part of the plan effort.
The 'Industrial Policy Resolution9 of 1948 and the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution reflected this outlook. In 1950, the Planning Commission was set up with the Prime Minister as its Chairperson. The era of five year plans had begun.
Type of Economic System
Every society has to answer three questions :
What goods and services should be produced in the country?
How should the goods and services be produced? Should producers use more human labour or more capital (machines) for producing things?
How should the goods and services be distributed among people?
In a market economy, also called capitalism, only those consumer goods will be produced that are in demand, i.e., goods that can be sold profitably either in the domestic or in the foreign markets.
If cars are in demand, cars will be produced and if bicycles are in demand, bicycles will be produced.
If labour is cheaper than capital, more labour-intensive methods of production will be used and vice-versa. In a capitalist society the goods produced are distributed among people not on the basis of what people need but on the basis of Purchasing Power-the ability to buy goods and services.
That is, one has to have the money in the pocket to buy it. Low cost housing for the poor is much needed but will not count as demand in the market sense because the poor do not have the purchasing power to back the demand.
As a result this commodity will not be produced and supplied as per market forces. Such more...
