Then Came The Marwaris

Then came the Marwaris:
Some aspects of the changes in the pattern

of industrial control in Eastern India
Omkar Goswami
Delhi School of Economics
- -.. ___n______-
At the end of World War I, the imperial sun was probably at its highest in
Calcutta, and no sahib worth his salt believed in anything other than
unchallengeable British supremacy in this, the richest and most glittering
metropolis of the sub-continent. The three most profitable industries in
Eastern India-tea, jute and coal-were firmly under British managing
agencies. On the foundations of the city house of Robert Clive and Philip
Francis loomed the Royal Exchange, which housed the Bengal Chamber
of Commerce, the most powerful European business federation in the
country. Opposite it stood the Chartered Bank Building, from where
operated Bird and Heilgers which, along with Andrew Yule, was one of
the two biggest managing agencies in the region. Duncan Brothers had
moved into its impressive Victorian styled headquarters in 1915; cheek-by-
jowl stood the Balmer Lawrie House while a little further down, near the
General Post Office, was the McLeod House. Architects had been com-
missioned to build two huge offices at Fairlie Place, one for Mackinnon
Mackenzie and the other for Kilbum and Company. And all these offices
nestled together in and around Dalhousie Square under the protective
umbrella of the Writers’ Building, the seat of the Government of the
Presidency of Bengal.
The burra sahibs were driven to their offices in Fords and Wolseleys. They
smoked Romeo y Juliettas or custom made cigarettes rolled by Theodoro
Vafiadis and Company and, in the cold season, wore tweed suits costing the
princely sum of Rs. 26-8-0. They lived in palatial splendour in mansions to
the south of the old Mahratta Ditch, played golf in the Royal and the Tolly,
watched the races on Saturday afternoons after lunching at Falettis, drank
their whisky-soda or brandy-panee at the Bengal Club and religiously
attended the Masonic Lodge meetings. The smaller sahibs, when they so
felt, poked their rattan canes on the backs of natives who had the temerity to
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226
stand in their way as they promenaded down the Chowringhee.’ These

were, indeed, idyllic times.
North of Dalhousie Square, the area delineated by Brabourne Road,
Central Avenue and I-Iarrison Road was, and is, called Burrabazar. This was
the domain of the Marwaris, whose forefathers had migrated from Rajasthan
to do commerce and money-lending in the prosperous eastern region of
India. No European sahib or memsahib entered this area and, in almost all
aspects, Burrabazar was the antithesis of Dalhousie Square. In the place of
well laid-out road were filthy, crooked by-lanes and alleys; instead of
palatial offices there were small, holes-in-the-wall gaddis where the Marwaris
conducted business worth millions of rupees in hard cash or against bills of
exchanges (hundis) taken out from strong boxes; instead of maintaining
audited accounts, the Marwaris made single entries in huge red cloth-bound
ledgers which were undecipherable by anyone other than the family.
The Marwaris, however, did not operate exclusively in a world of their
own. From the very beginning they interacted with European managing
agencies for, all said and done, the business of buying jute from an area that
stretched from Hooghly to Mymensingh or that of selling coal throughout
the sub-continent could not be done solely by Europeans. However, they
seemed to know their place in the business heirarchy. When on call to a
British managing agency, they sat unobtrusively in the main hall with the
clerks, waited until they were called inside, talked to sahibs and the head-
babus with utmost respect, conducted business on their behalf anè’1Juietly
went their way-these short, dhoti-clad, pugried men from Burrabazar. No
British box-wallah could have dreamt of Marwaris setting up jute mills and
collieries and taking over solidly European controlled firms in the years to
come.
Yet, this is precisely what happened in the period under scrutiny, and it
happened in abundance. Barring the tea gardens, by 1950 the Marwaris had
not only moved into new industrial activities but were poised to take over
almost all the older industries in the region-ones which were, in the recent
past, exclusive preserves of expatriates. Strange as it may sound, with the
exception of B.R. Tomlinson,2 business historians have singularly failed to
detect, leave alone analyse, this enormous change. Thus, students of Indian
economic history still tend to believe that the history of modem industry in
Eastern India is simply a story of unrelenting, hegemonic control of
European managing agencies.
Perhaps this omission is not surprising. The Marwaris, as a rule, were
nowhere near as visible as the Europeans, especially in the inter-war years.
1
The ’poking’ was fondly recalled by J.A. Mackerrow, a partner of Bird, in his valedictory
speech. See Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), Cambridge, Benthall Papers (BP), Box
XIV.
2
B.R. Tomlinson, ’Colonial Firms and the Decline of Colonialism in Eastern India,’
Modem Asian Studies (hereafter MAS
), 15(3), 1981.
227
The huge offices of Clive Street, the imposing marble staircase of the Bengal
Chamber of Commerce with portraits of its past Presidents augustly displayed
on brilliant white walls, and the leather-hacked armchairs of the Bengal
Club, were more obviously forceful signs of commercial power, pre-
eminence and permanence than the dirty cubicles of Brabourne Road and
Burrabazar. Such visual contrasts have probably played no mean role in
creating and perpetuating a distinctly European bias. There has also been,
one suspects, a tendency of opting for less controversial paths while writing
business histories of Eastern Indian. The Europeans were so much more
prominent than their Marwari counterparts that it became easy, almost
obvious, to write a story with Anglo-Saxons as the central figures. And each
such thesis gave credibility to the next. Often the characteristics of the lead
actors were inverted-Bagchi’s European, for instance, is almost dia-
metrically opposite to Daniel Buchanan’s-but their centrality was never in
question. Further, authors rarely examined the possibility of there being
other actors in the play, especially in discourses on Eastern India. Thus,
while Rajat Ray attempted to show the growth of Indian entrepreneurship
in different parts of India, he could not resist the lure of expatriate managing
agencies when it came to Eastern India. Without adequate research, he
passed on the existing orthodoxy in its most extreme form: that European
capital enjoyed an ’exclusive monopoly’ in Calcutta during 1914-1947.33
-
This essay attempts to trace the growth of Marwaris in modem industry in

Eastern India from the end of World War I to 1950. By the late 1960s, the
Marwaris controlled most major industries and industrial activities in the
eastern region. How did this control come about? Was it a purely post-
Independence phenomenon or can it be meaningfully traced back to the
pre-1947 period? What were the areas and instruments of such control?
These are a few of the queries one hopes to answer in the course of this essay.
It should be made clear that one is not attempting to minimise the powerful
presence of expatriate managing agencies in Eastern India. The issue is not
whether Europeans held the ’commanding heights’ of industry, but whether
there were other entrepreneurial groups competing with them in any signi-
ficant way. This essay has evolved from the belief that changes in the
structures of ownership, control and business activity in the years 1918-1950
are too complex to be explained merely in terms of expatriate managing
agencies. It would seem that the data under the surface bear this out.
A &dquo;3W clarifications are necessary. Here one is concerned with the
emergence of Marwari entrepreneurship and control and, hence, the
emphasis is on the industries where they shot into prominence, especially on
those where they competed with the expatriate houses. Second, I have
almost exclusively used data on those publicly held, joint-stock, limited
liability, rupee companies whose shares were traded in the Calcutta Stock
3
Rajat K. Ray, Industrialisation in India, 1914-1947 (Delhi, 1979), p. 53, emphasis mine.
228
Exchange. For one, this gives us a comparable, company-wise time-series

stretching from 1918 to 1950, presented annually in a useful and detailed
manner in the Investor’s India Year Book-a source that has not been well
examined by economic historians. Marwari dominance in internal trade
during the first half of the twentieth century has never been in dispute. If one
can further show their growing control over modern industry then the extent
of Marwari presence becomes greater than what has been previously hypo-
thesised. Of course, by concentrating on rupee companies, one must omit
tea gardens which were largely set-up with sterling funds. This is unfortunate
but unavoidable since time-series data are not available in India. One might,
however, argue that this is not a grave omission from the point of view of this
essay which is concerned with activities that came under Marwari compe-
tition-and tea did not. Penultimately, it is only fair to say that what follows
is based on the study of directorships of joint-stock companies. When this
paper was being prepared I could not get data on shareholdings from the
Registrar of Joint Stock Companies. I now understand that some data are
available and that they apparently corroborate the findings of this essay.
Researchers of business history are familiar with the advantages as well as
the drawbacks of examining board compositions. One particular dis-
advantage, namely that directorships do not imply control, the problem of
’tame’ directors, has been examined below and eliminated in the case of
Marwaris with the use of other material. Finally, this essay makes no claims
to definitiveness. If, after going through it, readers feel that a fresh view is
needed about the patterns of industrial control in Eastern India, the essay
will have served its purpose.
z
The Emergence of Marwaris, 1918-1929

In 1918, there were thirty-five jute mill companies in Bengal, two of which
were floated with foreign capital-Barnagaore with sterling funds and
Gondalpara with French francs. Together they accounted for Rs. 105.69
million worth of paid-up capital and 26,367 looms.&dquo; The industry, concen-
trated entirely along a narrow sixty-five mile strip running from the north to
the south of Calcutta, was controlled exclusively by European managing
agencies. Bird and Heilgers controlled ten mills, Andrew Yule seven, Jardine
Skinner four, McLeod three, Begg Dunlop, George Henderson, Kettlewell
Bullen and Gillanders two each while the remaining three were controlled
by Barry, Duncan and Anderson Wright. At a more detailed level, the
boards of directors reflected the control of European managing agencies. Of
the 114 directorships of jute mill companies, 111 (97.4 per cent) were under
Europeans while the remaining three were held by Marwaris. The two
Marwari directors were Onkarmull Jatia (in Yule’s Caledonian mill) and
4
) 1919, section on jute.
Investor’s India Year Book (hereafter IIYB
229
Kesoram Poddar (in Bird’s Clive mill and McLeod’s Empire), whose families
wereto figure prominently in the years to cornerS
The position was somewhat different in the coal industry. There were
ninety-five joint-stock, public limited, rupee colliery companies with a total
paid-up capital of Rs. 57 million. Bird and Heilgers managed twenty-one
such firms, Yule sixteen, H.V. Low and Shaw Wallace ten each, Macneill
five, Martin four, Balmer Lawrie, Jardine, Linton Molesworth and Kilbum
three apiece, Anderson Wright and McLeod two each and Octavius Steel
and Turnbull had one each. Unlike jute, the industry did have native
entrepreneurs even in 1918: N.C. Sircar and Sons managed seven collieries
which, in the sum, accounted for Rs. 3.07 million worth of paid-up capital.66
However, like many turn of the century Bengali concerns, the company was
in dire straits. While other companies were declaring dividends in the range
of 25 per cent to 45 per cent, Sircar’s firms declared an average dividend of 7
per cent of paid-up capital; and in a year when collieries were making a
fortune, this managing agency’s liquidity position stood at a paltry Rs.
51,000 or 1.7 per cent of paid-up capital; in a period of boom, shares of four
of its seven companies were quoted at less than par value. It is not surprising
that by 1924-25 six of Sircar’s collieries were liquidated and the seventh,
Baraboni, was bought by H.V. Low for a song.88
The cotton textile industry was insignificant in size compared to its
counterpart in Western India. As of 1918, there were only six mills with a
total spindleage of 186,000.~ Two firms~Mohini and Bengal Luxmi-were
set up in response to the swadeshi movement and were exclusively under
Bengali control; but they only accounted for 19 per cent of the total spindle
capacity. On the other hand, the three units managed by Kettlewell
Bullen-Bowreah, Dunbar and New Ring-accounted for 80 per cent of
total spindleage.’° But there were rumours of some Marwaris, particularly
Ghanshyamdas Birla, Radhakissen Sonthalia and Kesoram Poddar, planning
to get together and set up a couple of modern composite mills around
Calcutta.&dquo;I
Besides these industries (and, of course, tea), there was a smattering
of other activities. With the exception of the Tata Iron and Steel
Company, the units were not only quite small in size but generally controlled
by European managing agencies. Of course, it needs to be noted that
Prafulla Chandra Roy had set-up the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical
Company which had become a profitable entity by the end of World War I.
5
Ibid., section on jute.
6
IIYB 1919, section on coal.
7
Ibid.
IIYB 1925-26, section on coal.
8
IIYB 1919, section on cotton.
9
10
Ibid.
11
They did enter. See IIYB 1925-26, section on cotton.
230
It was, indeed, a pioneering venture into an uncharted, high technology

activity but, in terms of asset size, turnover or profits it was yet to make its
mark. Table 1 shows the race-wise breakdown of directorships in different
industrial activities c. 1918.
’
Table 1
Race-wise Breakdown of Directorship in Diffemtt l1Ulu.rtries, 1918
*
Note: All from TISCO; I,S,E: Iron, Steel and Engineering; S,N,W: Shipping, Navigation
_
and Warehousing; I,F,B,T: Ice, Food, Beverages and Tobacco; I.Nm: Indian, non-
Marwaris. ’
Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1919, Seventh edition.
In spite of such obvious European dominance, World War I and, to a

lesser extent, the decade before it had created a milieu that was conducive to
Marwari entry in the 1920s. By the turn of the century, the bulk of internal
trade in raw jute as well as much of the export was in the hands of Marwaris. 122
Perhaps the most significant index of Marwari presence in the jute trade was
the phenomenal growth of fatka (or speculation) in raw jute as well as
gunny. An exclusively Marwari institution, fatka was introduced by six
Marwari traders in 1905--6.13 By 1911, it had become so all-pervasive that the
12
By 1870s, the Marwaris had firmly entrenched themselves in the raw jute trade. In
Sirajganj, a particular Marwari had become so important by 1877 that jute sold by him was
called Chokechandi jute (after his name, Choke Chand Chamaria). In raw jute exports, the
Marwaris were prominent members of the allegedly European controlled Calcutta Baled Jute
Association (hereafter CBJA). By 1918-19, Marwari exporting firms accounted for 63 per cent
of CBJA’s membership and in the roster were names such as G.D. Birla, Sarupchand
Hukumchand, Surajmull Nargarmull, Onkarmull Jatia and Ramdutt Ramkissendass. CBJA,
Report of the Committee, 1918-19, pp. 19-22.
13See Capital, Calcutta weekly, 16 January 1930, pp. 139-40.
231
European controlled Tndian Jute Mills’ Association (IJMA) begged the

Government to bat. fatka which was apparently making ’legitimate trade
something of a hugc gamble’. 14 In fact, Marwaris made fortunes by specu-
lating on jute as well as on’company shares. Ghanshyamdas Birla, Sarup-
chand Hukumchand, Kesoram Poddar, Mangiram Bangur and Baldeodas
Doodhwawalla made millions on the bullish stock market and on hedge
transactions in raw jute and gunny and, in the process, multiplied the capital
that was soon to be sunk into industries.
In coal, too, the business of trading in coal throughout the sub-continent
was very much in Marwari hands. The point is that by the end of World War I
the Marwari community was perfectly adept at trade in jute, gunny and coal
and had mastered the subleties of the Stock Exchange; further, it had
accumulated a considerable amount of capital, especially during the War
years; and given the extremely rudimentary nature of technology in con-
verting raw jute into gunny and in open-cast or strip mining, there were no
effective technological barriers to entry.
Perhaps what was needed was proof that engaging in manufacturing and
in the use of fixed capital could be at least as profitable as trade, commerce
and indigenous banking. Such proof came in abundance during the last two
years of the War. In the coal industry demand increased by 36 per cent
between 1909-13 and 1914-18 and price rose by 30 per cent. 15 In jute, the
situation was spectacular. In 1918, five of the thirty-five companies whose
shares were traded in the Stock Exchange earned net profits between 50 and
99 per cent of paid-up capital; nine in the range 100-149 per cent; eleven
between 150 and 199 per cent and the remaining ten earned net profits that
were 200 per cent or more of paid-up capital. The modal dividend on
ordinary shares was in the range of 140-160 per cent and share prices shot up
to as much as ten times their face value. 16
The first signs of the changes that were to come showed up in a limited way
during the years 1918-1920. Almost every managing agency gave its partners,
managers and assistants shares in the companies they managed. With share
prices reigning at eight to ten times their par value, the temptation to sell was
too great to ignore. When Edward Benthall, the future Chairman of Bird
and Company, arrived in the autumn of 1920, he found that almost all
European employees had sold or were in the process of selling their shares at
17
enormous profits. The buyers were Marwaris.
Between 1920 and 1925, spurred on by the bullishness of the 1920s, eleven
14
IJMA, Report of the Committee 1911, pp. 91-103.
15
16
IIYB 1919, section on jute.
17
This is what Benthall wrote in his diary: ’An old technical hand in a Bird mill told a new
recruit, "Don’t worry about the pay, son. You can make far more on the stock market and any
time you like just walk across the street and double your salary." ’ Quoted in G. Harrison, Bird
and Company of Calcutta, 1864-1964 (n.d.), pp. 133-34.
232
new jute mills were set-up, of which nine were under European managing
agencies. Similarly, as many as forty-six new collieries were floated.’8 In the
meanwhile, capital costs had escalated and most of these new companies had
grossly under-estimated their capital requirement. The gap was sought to be
covered either through large debenture issues at 5 per cent to 7 per cent
interest or by ’heavy short term borrowings for long term purposes on the
z
assumption that profits could be as easily made as in the war years.’’9
It seems that a fair amount of short-term funds were borrowed from
Marwari families at lower rates of interest, against the security of blocks of
ordinary shares. Typically, the Marwari lenders were the old banias of the
companies-such as Jatias with Andrew Yule, Badridas Goenka, Doodh-
wawalla, Bangur and Baldeodas Bajoria with Bird and Heilgers, the
Kanorias with McLeod and Rameshwar Nathany with Jardine Skinner.
The net effect of these two post-war trends-buying shares sold at high
prices and advancing loans against share collateral-was that certain Marwari
families obtained enough shares to get their patriarchs elected onto the
boards of several jute mill companies. In 1918, only three out of thirty-five
jute companies listed in the IIYB had Marwaris on their boards. By the end
of 1924, there were forty-eight mill companies of which forty-six were under
European managing agencies. Of the latter, nineteen companies (41 per
cent of the European firms) had at least one Marwari diiector and five had
two Marwaris on the boards. 20
A slightly more detailed look is even more revealing. Clearly Andrew
Yule was very deeply in debt to its bania, for every one of its ten jute mills
had a Jatia on its board, and three Yule mills had two Marwaris as directors. 21
Likewise, Rameshwar Nathany was a director in two of the four mills
managed by Jardine Skinner, Chandmul Kanoria in two of the four McLeod
mills, Badridas Goenka was on the board of two Begg Dunlop and one Bird
mill company, and Bangur was a director of Bird’s flagship mill, Union.
Undercapitalisation and borrowing had resulted in 67 per cent of the com-
panies, established in or after 1919, having at least one Marwari on the
board.22
Till the Depression, the jute industry enjoyed the benefits of growing
world trade in primary commodities and, hence, demand for gunny. The
situation was rather different in the case of coal. Here was an industry where
it was impossible to predict the swings in price as well as in demand. At a
time when the jute industry was booming, the collieries were going through
a nasty cycle. 1919 to 1924 were years of relative prosperity: demand
averaged at 19.8 million tons and prices were as high as Rs. 12.75 per ton of
18
IIYB 1925-26, sections on jute and coal.
19
G. Harrison, quoting from Benthall’s diary, op. cit., pp. 133-34.
20
IIYB 1925-26, section on jute.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
233
Bengal steam grade coal. But the years 1925-30 saw quite the reverse trend:
railway demand fell sharply, leading to an initial fall in prices. In an effort to
reduce average costs, many collieries started mining larger output with the
hope that demand would pick up. It did not and prices plummeted to an
average of Rs. 6.25 per ton (1925-29) or 52 per cent less than what it was in
1920-24.23 By 1928, 300 small proprietory mines and leased-in collieries in
the marginal mining areas around Jharia and Raniganj had closed down
’never to open again’.24 Thirty out of the forty-five new joint-stock collieries
floated immediately after the war had to be liquidated. The IIYB of 1928-29
painted a grim picture:
It is impossible to bring working costs down to keep pace with the drop in
prices and the only end appears to be the survival of the fittest [and]
collieries expensive to work and companies with no reserves will go to the
25
wall.
With such fluctuations in an otherwise prosperous decade, it is not sur-

prising that Marwaris generally stayed away from coal. Nevertheless, the
trends that were so clearly visible in jute were not entirely absent in the coal
industry. There were thirteen Marwari directors in the eighty-two collieries
listed in the IIYB which were under European managing agencies; the
Jatias, of Yule fame, had completely taken over the Parasea colliery, whose
board now had three Marwaris and a lone European; and Sukhlall Karnani
was attempting to take over four collieries under H.V. Low. 26 All said and
done, however, the changes in the composition of the boards in the coal
industry was, in the period, far less striking than in jut~a matter that will
be analysed in the following section.
Besides the share market, there was a second and more visible way in
which the Marwaris entered the industrial sector: by setting up new units.
Before going into this one should settle a query that might come up at this
stage. Critics may very well question my data base and argue that Marwaris
on the boards of European companies were ’tame’ directors, kept here and
there to pander to growing nationalist sentiments. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. To Calcutta’s European mercantile community, natives fell
into three broad groups: the brown sahibs, the clerical babus and the banias.
Babus and boards were poles apart. Over time, the brown sahibs were
accommodated on boards as social equals by virtue of their being ’proper
chaps’; further, members of this group either did not possess the means to
usurp the commercial control of the Europeans or, better still, had enough
respect for the rules of the club to attempt to do so. Companies could easily
23
24
IIYB 1928-29, p. 71.
25
Ibid., p. 71.
26
234
accommodate people like Manindra Chandra Nundy, Bhupendra Narayan

Sinha, Bejoy Prasad Singh-Roy, the Maharajas of Santosh and Burdwan
and Lord Sinha of Raipur, without the slightest fear of take-over. The
Marwaris belonged to a different species altogether. That they were per-
ceived of as a serious threat is obvious if one looks at the images painted of
them by expatriate businessmen and their paid journalists.
In 1935, when Marwaris had become much more visible on the industrial
canvas, Edward Benthall of Bird and Company expressed a sneaking
admiration for the community: ’the enterprise and the efficiency of the
modern Marwarri [sic] merchant cannot be expected to be fully appreciated
abroad. &dquo;’ Such admiration prevented neither him nor his Clive Street
colleagues from heaping abuse on this community and blaming them for all
the industries’ woes~a trait admirably picked up by latter day Bengalis.
Capital, a weekly that was partly owned by Bird and survived on advertise-
ments from European managing agencies, did not hesitate to call Marwaris
’mugs with money’;28 whenever a Marwari attempted to enter an industry he
was ’up to some dirty work’;29 and, in spite of his generally pro-Indian
attitudes, Benthall longed ’to see one of the upstart [Marwari] mills going
into liquidation and coming back to British management whoever it may
...
be.’3° Among the Marwaris, Birla was singled out as the villain of the piece.
’I understand Birla is getting a little bit bobbery [sic] again,’ wrote M.P.
Thomas of Bird in 1928. ’He has done more to encourage new mills than
anyone. If he_ can’t get us out by kicking us out, he will try to get us out by
unfair competition. ’31 With the Depression, Marwaris were regularly referred
to as ’pirates’ or, in a more charitable vein, ’short-sighted industrialists’.32
Given these attitudes-and such examples can be easily multiplied--it would
seem rather unlikely that Marwaris were cordially invited to be on the
boards of European companies. If they were directors of such firms, it was
largely because they had bulldozed their way in.
Direct entry by Marwaris through the setting up of new units featured
significantly in the 1920s, especially in the jute industry. Here, the pioneers
were Birla and Sarupchand Hukumchand who set up their mills in 1922. In
fact, the pivotal role of Birla cannot be exaggerated: between 1919 and 1922
he set up two cotton and a jute mill with the most modern machinery
available and actively supported any venture that could result in direct
Indian entry into industry. Birla’s encouragement and, more importantly,
the profitability of the industry in the 1920s contributed to the setting up of
27
CSAS, BP, Box X, 27 June 1935.
28
Capital, 2 February 1933, pp. 171-72.
29
CSAS, BP, Thomas-Benthall, Box I,12 December 1928.
30
CSAS, BP, Edward-Paul Benthall, 8 November 1937.
31
CSAS, BP, Thomas-Benthall, 12 December 1928, emphasis mine.
32
CSAS, BP, Box X, Morton-Benthall, 16 September 1935 and IJMA, Report of the
Committee 1934, p. 12.
235
six Indian and one Armenian mill in Calcutta. As such, they accounted
for a little over 10 per cent of the loomage; but their existence and growth
gave them a numerical and, I dare say, a moral strength vis-a-vis the
expatriates.
These two trends-entry through the Stock Exchange and setting up of
new units-continued in varying degrees through the 1920s. The position
as of 1930 is given in Table 2. Whatever be the magnitude of entry-
impressive in jute, not so in coal-the process clearly shows that blanket

statements of the kind that industries in Eastern India were an ’exclusive
monopoly’ of Europeans (to quote Rajat Ray) should be taken less
seriously than before.
Table 2
Directorships in Jute, Coal and Coaon, 1930
*
All de jure under H. V. Low but without any Europeans on the board.
*
* Two Bengali mills and one Marwari.
Note: AY: Andrew Yule; BH: Bird and Heilgers; BD: Begg Dunlop; Mc: Mcleod; HVL:
H.V. Low.
Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1931-32.
236
The Depressed Years, 1930-1938: Consolidation Phase I
It is doubtful whether there ever was or could be a unique maximisation
principle or objective for the managing agencies. The type of data available
would, in any case, belie efforts in asserting that managing agencies were
profit, growth or sales maximisers. The data, however, do suggest a couple
of things. First, that managing agencies believed in the principle of
maximising control over their firms at the least possible corporate cost.
Second, they attempted to have as wide an investment portfolio as possible,
cutting across a gamut of industrial and tertiary activities, subject to a notion
of minimum profits and/or dividend income and, of course, the first principle.
In achieving the first objective, the managing agencies typically did the
following:
a) Float a new company.
b) Given the agency’s prestige, the issue would invariably be oversubscribed.
c) Some of the shares would be held by the agency. The majority would be
split up in a way such that, with proxy votes, the agency would command
the controlling block.
d) In the first general meeting of the company, the agency would ensure
that its senior executives and other trusted members were in the majority
on the board.
e) The board thus constituted would then appoint the agency to manage the
company’s affairs. For this service, the agency would get a commission on
gross profits and/or sales and, of course, a share of the dividend income.
Given the fact that ’the imprimatur of a managing agency was ... essential
for the successful floatation of any public limited company in India,’’3 it was
absurdly simple to split up shares in extremely advantageous and cost-
effective ways. It was possible, for instance, in the mid-1920s for Andrew
Yule to control ten jute mills in spite of owning less than 30 per cent of the
equity in eight of these companies. In seven of the ten mills controlled by
Bird and Heilgers, the parent companies held less than 25 per cent of the
ordinary shares~a matter that considerably worried Benthall who ruled in
1929 that the agency must own at least 25 per cent of the equity if it were to
remain in control over time.34 Similarly, Jardine and McLeod had four mills
each: in three of the mills managed by the former, the parent concern’s
holding varied from 6 per cent to 21 per cent of paid-up capital while
McLeod’s ownership of three mills ranged from 1 per cent to 18 per cent of
the share capital. Begg Dunlop owned 10 per cent and 13 per cent of the
equity of two of its four mills.35
33
P.S. Lokanathan, Industrial Organisation in India (London, 1935), p. 23.
34
Ibid., p. 187. These figures are for 1927.
35
Ibid., p. 187.
237
The situation rather different in the coal industry. Here, managing

was
agencies typically owned 35 per cent or more of the share capital of its
collieries. Yule, for instance, held 35 per cent or more shares in 75 per cent
of its collieries while Heilgers had 25 per cent or more shares in all its units.36
Why was there this great difference between these two industries? The
answer lies in the differences in the intial capital requirements. At Rs. 6
million, the equity needs of an average sized joint-stock colliery company

was roughly a fifth of what was required to set up a jute mill. 37 Therefore, for
the same absolute outlay, managing agencies could own a much larger block
of shares in collieries than in jute mills. This, in turn, made the coal industry
somewhat less susceptible to take-over bids.
The second principle-that of extension of activities, subject to control-
critically depended upon the prestige of the managing agency which, in turn,
was linked to its ability to declare and steady high dividends for all or most of
the firms under its control. Steady dividends also prevented sharp dips in
share prices and, thus, kept block purchasing predators at bay. They also
ensured over-subscription of future issues~a factor necessary for attaining
the first objective.
These two broad norms were meant for business carried out in normal
years. The period 1930-35 was anything but normal. It is doubtful whether
business organisations, irrespective of type, form and structures of control,
would have had the strength to withstand the rigours of the Depression.
European managing agencies in India, with their penchant for bureau-
cratisation and inflexibility, were certainly ill-equipped to handle the slump,
and the contradictions embedded in the two principles came to the fore in
the topsy-turvy years of the 1930s.
For the jute industry, the Depression was a calamity of unprecedented
proportions. Table 3 gives some of the quantitative dimensions of the fall in
the world demand for gunny bags and cloth. Naturally, prices plummeted:
the average price of hessian and sacking fell by 45 per cent and 46 per cent
respectively between 1925-29 and 1930-34.3g
I have elsewhere described the effects of the Depression on the jute
industry as well as on the agricultural sector.39 Here I shall only focus on
those aspects which are germane to this essay. IJMA, a body dominated by
European jute mill-owners, reacted to the Depression by promulgating all
sorts of supply restricting devices. Working hours were reduced from sixty to
forty per week, 15 per cent of the looms were sealed and member mills had
to remain closed for a week per month. As soon as these restrictions were
36
Ibid., p. 187.
37
Computed from IIYB 1919.
38
IJMA, Report of the Committee 1949, pp. 116-17.
39
See my articles, ’Collaboration and Conflict: European and Indian Capitalists and the Jute
Economy of Bengal, 1919-39,’ IESHR, 19(2), 1982, pp. 141-79, and ’Agriculture in Slump:
The Peasant Economy of East and North Bengal in the 1930s,’ IESHR, 21(3),1984, pp. 335-64.
238
imposed, five new mills, all set-up in the 1920s and all under non-European
control, asked for special dispensation on account ot theii Jatively high
fixed costs. IJMA refused to consider their case and the mills forthwith
resigned from the Association and started working 108 hours per week. By
1932-33, there were eleven Indian mills (of which nine were in Bengal)
working outside the ambit of IJMA, following no restrictions whatsoever,
doing generally better than the IJMA mills and thereby incurring both the
wrath and the envy of the Association units.
Table 3
Impact of the Depression on the .lute Industry (192129 =
1(0)
Source: IJMA, Report of the Committee, 1949, pp. 97-101, 114--115, 116-117.
This brings us to an important question. ’i the jute industry was organised

like a tight, European controlled cartt.’, as. Bagchi tends to believe,4° then
lyw could eleven relatively small Indian mills defy the instructions passed
down by the IJMA with such impunity? Further, eight of these ’rebel’ mills
were owned by Marwaris (two other Marwari mills, Hukumchand and Birla,
remained within IJMA but created problems at every pretext) a factor that
underscores the advances made by this community in industry that was, till
recently, a European enclave. The ’outsiders’ were certainly doing well for
themselves. In the course of 1934-35 it was found that while IJMA mills
earned a modal profit in the .range of 7-11 per cent, the ’rebels’ earned
around 25-30 per cent which forced an old European partner to conclude
that these mills ’were in such a strong position over relative costs that
whatever we did we could not compete with them even if we were working on
’
level time’. 41i

40
See, for instance, A.K. Bagchi, Private Investment in India, 1900-1938 (Cambridge,
1972), p. 270.
41
CSAS, BP, Morton-Benthall, Box X, 23 August 1935.
/239
IJMA tried all that it could to discipline these unruly outsiders but to no
avail. Finally, it came to an agreement with five outside mills. The gist of this
rapprochement was that outsiders would be allowed to work fifty-four hours
per week using all their looms while member mills would continue working
forty hours a week with 85 per cent capacity.42 The agreement was considered
to be great victory. To my mind, this is the most glaring example of the
weakness of the European mills and also of the ascendancy of the Marwaris.
Here was an allegedly all-powerful Association making an agreement that
penalised its members vis-a-vis the non-members; besides, the agreement
ignored nine other mills which were free to do what they wanted and could
recreate the same contradictions over time.
This brings us to a second question. Why did such an ’agreement’ come
into being? Why did IJMA not launch an all-out price war with the interlopers
to bring them in line? The answer is that managing agencies were afraid of
taking a hard-line. Confrontation would have led to a price war and heavy
losses for at least a couple of years. As mentioned earlier, most mills had
borrowed heavily against shares during the 1920s. With markets crashing,
share prices tumbled and creditors started asking for margins which were
difficult to find. Banks started threatening to sell shares in the open market
and many Marwari creditors (Onkarmull Jatia for one) started demanding
larger blocks of shares as security against loans.43 Old jute hands, though
disgusted by the growth of natives in the industry, were firm in their belief
that it would be ’better to make substantial concessions to the outside mills
than to fight and incur losses’. 44 So we see that by the 1930s, the Marwaris
had not only entered a hitherto European industry but were in a position to
dictate terms and even force the Europeans to pursue policies that were not
only beneficial to the Marwaris but also detrimental to the expatriates!
Maintaining corporate prestige during the Depression was a costly affair.
With a sharp fall in profits, there was a strong downward pull on share
prices. To counter this, companies started declaring artificially high
dividendsr-outlays that bore no relationship to profits. This was done by
running down the reserves accumulated over the 1920s. Between 1930 and
1935, the industry spent almost Rs. 29 million in its attempt to shore up share
prices 45 When a second slump occured in 1937-38, the mills paid out
another Rs. 18 million for the same purpose.46
Nevertheless, share prices did drop (as Chart A shows). And it seems that
Marwaris bought up the bulk of the shares sold by the panicky ’uncommitted
middle’ during the trough years 1931-32 and 1937-38. Here lay the strength
42
See my article ’Collaboration and Conflict,’ op. cit.
43
Government of Bengal, West Bengal State Archives, Commerce Dept., Comm. Branch,
F. 2-J-1, September 1932, Progs. 87-134B, note by R.N. Gilchrist.
44
CSAS, BP, Box X, Benthall-Morton, 20 September 1935.
45
Computed from IIYB 1930-31 to 1935-36.
46
Computed from IIYB 1938-39.
240
241
as well as the Achilles’ heel of the managing agencies. In good years, the
’uncommitted middle’ willingly lent their votes to the managing agencies;
equally, in slumps, it was precisely this group that sold out.
These changes show up when one sees the composition of the companies
in 1939-40. Of the fifty-nine jute mills listed in the IIYB, twelve (or 20 per
cent) were owned as well as managed by non-European companies (as
against 8 per cent in 1930). Of these, eight were under Marwaris. Among the
European mills, 62 per cent had at least one Marwari on the board (versus 57
per cent in 1930); three of them were now fully taken over by Marwaris. 63
per cent of the companies had Marwaris as directors (as against 56 per cent in
1930) and, quite clearly, the gains made by this community in the 1920s were
surely getting consolidated in the 1930s.°’
Share prices dropped in the coal industry as well (see Chart B). This was
inevitable: demand had fallen dramatically and the average price of steam
grade coal had slumped by 31 per cent from Rs. 6.25 in 1925-29 to Rs. 4.25
per ton.48 If anything, a far greater number of collieries, in absolute as well
as in relative terms, saw their shares being quoted at well below par value.
Unlike jute, however, there was no attempt at declaring artificially high
dividends; nor was there a significant increase in Marwari directorships in
European companies. This can be explained in terms of the Europeans
having an initially more secure ownership over collieries than jute mills.
There were lesser fears of Marwari entry through the Stock Exchange and,
hence, a lesser need to declare high dividends for stabilising share prices.
There was, nevertheless, some Marwari entry. By 1939, eleven joint-
stock collieries (20 per cent of the total) were exclusively under Indians,
against 15 per cent a decade earlier. Of these, eight were Marwari firms, a
considerable improvement over 1929-30. The number of Indians setting up
new collieries were limited: only Karamchand Thapar and Amritlal Ojha
had started new units. The number of European collieries that had to make
do with Marwari directors had increased from 19 per cent of the total in 1930
to 26 per cent in 1939 and the number of companies (European as well as
Indian) having Marwaris on boards rose from 19 per cent to 35 per cent over
the same period.49
Till the mid-1930s, a conspicuous feature of Marwari entry was that this
community tended to stay away from the more modern industrial activities
such as engineering, iron and steel, pharmaceuticals and cement. Several
explanations tend to suggest themselves, such as ’they preferred to be in the
businesses they knew’ or ’being intrinsically traders, they were shy of entering
into multi-process industries’. But these ’explanations’ cannot explain, for
instance, why after 1935-36 the Marwaris moved precisely into those
industries that they had earlier avoided. If these explanations are supposed
47
48
49
242
243
to be evolutionary in content they became familiar with A and so moved

into A, then became familiar with B and so on-then they are almost
unfalsifiable truisms that have very little explanatory value.
One set of explanations merits a closer look. Linked to wider economic
forces, it attempts to relate (Indian) entry in certain industrial sectors to the
tariff protection and changes in stores purchase policy of the inter-war years.
Thus, it is argued that tariffs had a dramatic impact on the growth of the
Indian sugar industry, 50 a more lagged and diffused impact on the paper
industry, an almost instantaneous impact on the match industry and stores
policy had a differential but nevertheless favourable effect on engineering as
well as on iron and steel. There are two kinds of problems with this expla-
nation. First, one has to decompose the different factors behind industrial
starts and then examine the relative strength of protection and purchase
policy. The fact that there was a burst of activity in a hitherto small or
non-existent industrial sector within a couple of years of granting higher
protection does not necessarily imply that this was the determining factor.
More importantly, these arguments can at best explain entry, not race-wise
entry. Why, in response to changes in stores policy, did multinationals enter
the engineering industry while, in reaction to tariff protection, Indians
entered sugar? This explanation is silent on such issues.
Satisfactory explanations require far more research. What one can say,
however, is that the period 1935-40 represents a sort of structural break in
the growth of Marwari entrepreneurship: while they carried on unabated in
the more traditional sectors of modern industry, they had conspicuously
entered the relatively technologically advanced sectors as well. By 1939
there were thirteen joint-stock sugar mill companies in Eastern India having
a total capacity of producing 12,700 tons of sugar per day. Of these, eight
were set-up in the 1930s, seven under Indian ownership. The Marwaris
alone accounted for 42.5 per cent of the total crushing capacity; the biggest
mill in India was controlled by the Dalmia-Jain group and three of the four
largest mills were under Marwari ownership. 51 Likewise, in the paper
industry, the Marwaris accounted for 29 per cent of the capacity available in
the Eastern region, and were setting up mills in other regions as well
We find, therefore, that on the eve of World War II, there was a consi-
derable presence of Marwari entrepreneurs in various sectors of Indian
industry. Bagchi and Ray have attempted to explain this in terms of a
dichotomy between the export and the domestic sector. The hypothesis is
that Europeans, with their substantial knowledge of foreign markets, con-
trolled or monopolised the export oriented sectors while Indians, with their
knowledge of local markets, moved into the domestic sector.33 Thus, we
50
See Bagchi, op. cit., p. 371.
51
IIYB 1945-47, section on sugar.
52
Ibid., miscellaneous section.
53
See, for instance, Bagchi, op.cit., p. 195.
244
have an implicit hypothesis that natives entered and prospered in areas

which were outside the purview of expatriate managing agencies. Had they
attempted to do otherwise, the oligopolistic powers of the British firms plus
their ’bonds of racial affinity with the rulers of the land’S4 would have come
into play and made life difficult, if not impossible, for the sons of the soil. We
have shown that not only did natives enter into activities catering to the
domestic market but had firmly entrenched themselves in traditional
European enclaves such as jute and coal. We have also indicated (and
elsewhere demonstrated)&dquo; that even in an industry as European as jute, the
oligopolistic power of the expatriate community was far weaker than what
one generally believed. The Europeans, it would seem, could neither prevent
entry nor adopt a Stackelberg leadership position. As a matter of fact, they
could not effectively penalise Indian interlopers for not adhering to the
European rules of the game.
In the more modem industries, Indians entered what were, for all practical
purposes, virgin territories. Arguably, entry here was easier and more
conflict-free than in industries such as jute and .coal. That Indians entered
and prospered in the European-dominated industries in the colonial era is
itself a reason for detailed study. It certainly negates the essentially
expatriate-centric view that under colonialism natives had access only to
’
residual areas.
1939-1950: Consolidation Phase II and Diversification
It may seem curious that we have taken 1950 rather than 1947 as the end of
Phase II. I will argue that there is hardly a case to be made for treating 1947
as a watershed. The politics of decolonisation did not affect the industrial
sector in Eastern India in a manner that could warrant a separate treatment. -56
World War II, like its predecessor, brought with it another period of high
profits for industries in general and was a much needed break after the
1930s. Profits soared for the jute as well as the coal industry. From an
average of 7.3 per cent of paid-up capital between 1935 and 1938, the jute
industry’s net profits soared to 45 per cent in 1944-45.57 Share prices picked
up from the 1938 trough and rose steadily though the war, finally peaking in
1946, when shares were quoted at more than five and a half times their par
value. 58 The trading sector, too, rode the boom. With high prices and with
Marwaris dealing in 75-$0 per cent of the raw jute and gunny trader the
54
Ibid., p. 166.
55In ’Collaboration and Conflict,’ op. cit.
56
This does not deny the overall importance of independence. I merely want to say that its
articulation on the industrial canvas was minimal.
57
Computed from IIYB 1945-47, section on jute.
58
Ibid.
59ICJC, Report on the Marketing of Jute and Jute Products in India (Calcutta, 1941),
pp. 90-91.
245
community made a considerable fortune during the war. It is not surprising,

therefore, that the Marwaris made another attempt at takeovers through the
Stock Exchange. This time, growing political uncertainties made the task of
buying inflated shares easier than before.
However, the point to be emphasised is that the major changes through
takeovers of European companies occured between 1942 and 1945 and not
after independence. In other words, the decline of European firms and the
ascendancy of the Marwaris were not due to panicky disinvestments of the
post-independence years. These were, as one can see from Table 4, World
War II phenomena.
Table 4
Chmegws in the Conrpo~sition of Ownnship and Control in Jute
Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1942-43, 1945-47, 1949, 1952.
Tabk 5
Changes in the Compasidan of 0wMnItJp and Commi ill Coal
246,
The trend shown in Table 4 was much the same for the coal industry (see
Table 5). Here, too, the hypothesis of expatriate managing agencies beating
a rapid post-independence retreat stands largely invalidated. As one can
clearly see from the two tables, the major changes in the racial composition
~ of the boards of these companies occurred in the period 1942-45. In coal, a
further development took place: the setting up of wholly Indian owned
collieries. Between 1942 and 1945, ten new collieries were set up with a total
paid-up capital of Rs. 20 million and a surface area of 11,700 acres. Six of
these were under the Marwaris. 6° Also, the number of takeovers were on the
rise. The coal industry, which could earlier prevent takeovers through share
buying, found the war years rather difficult to handle. Now not only were the
Marwaris keen on buying on the high but shareholders, too, were willing to
sell at profits. _
One can trace the changes that were taking place within the Marwari
community. This is attempted for jute and coal by tracking the family-wise
breakdown of directorships in the period 1942-51. Clearly, this is not the
best index-a person might have many directorships but not own any
unit but it serves to give a crude sort of ’proliferation index’ in the aggregate
as well as between families. It is also incomplete for we have not taken the
’new’ industries into account. Table 6 is presented to serve a limited purpose:
that of showing when families entered, grew and declined in traditionally
European dominated industries.
From Table 6 one can see that some families.-notably the Bangurs and
the Goenkas~were late-starters and moved into these two industries in a
big way only during World War II. Both did this entirely through the share
market. Also some families tended to keep away from either one of the two
industries. The Bajorias avoided coal while the Sonthalias kept away from
jute. Finally, though this does not show up in Table 6, many new Maiwari
families entered the industrial scene. Among them were the Shethias, the
Beriwallas, the Jhunjhunwallas, the Bhuwalkas and the Jaipurias-relatively
unknown entities in the 1930s. And in the Marwari pecking order, they had a
long way to go before they could consider themselves to be social equals of
the Birlas, Goenkas, Bangurs and Jatias.
The movement into more modern industries continued through this
period. If anything, there was a much greater burst of Indian investments in
these areas then before. In this the war played its role. It not only offered
effective protection but also increased the size of the market and the rate of
profit. An important feature was the growth of Marwari involvement in the
engineering industry. Hindusthan Motor and the Textile Machinery
Corporation (TEXMACO) were both set up by Birla. TEXMACO did
exceptionally well during the war years, thanks to the fall in machinery
imports from Britain and Northern Ireland. 61
60
"
Ibid., section on engineering and miscellaneous.
’247
Table 6
Distribution of Marwari Dinctorships According to Families
*
The Birla picture is misleading. This family rarely took up directorships in companies that
they did not own or fully control.
Conclusions
Before concluding, one should give stronger evidence to support the hypo-
thesis that decolonisation, per se, had at best a marginal impact on two
traditional industries of Eastern India. The negligible effect of independence
on the third-tea plantations-is well known. If decolonisation had a strong
immediate impact on these two industries, one would expect the effects to
show up within a decade of independence. There might then be a significant
lagged decline in the relative position of European businessmen and com-
panies, which should then show up in the indices used through this essay.
248
However, if we compare the relative positions of Europeans, Indians and

Marwaris between 1945 and 1957 we immediately see that this is not the case
(see Table 7).
Table 7 reinforces the earlier hypothesis that the critical years were
1942-45 and the changes which occurred within a decade of independence
were very small. In fact, in certain cases, European strength increased.
Table 7
Changts in the Composition of Ownership and Cmwo4 Jute and Co4 194~5, 1957
Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1945-47 and 1958.
It is worth asking why have the conclusions, highlighted in this essay, been
missed by most earlier authors? Why has the expatriate managing agency
held sway in economic historiography if not in history? To a large extent
because the data base was relatively,weak and earlier authors did not analyse
the type of data used in this article. Only Tomlinson hinted otherwise. 62
However, his exposition was limited by the use of a single data source-the
papers of Edward Benthall. By looking at the Benthall Papers, he tended to
implicitly gravitate towards a ’planned retreat’ hypothesis: from the 1930s
and especially during the early 1940s, the expatriates had seen the writing on
the wall and were slowly packing their bags. I feel that this is not an
important explanation because the managing agencies who survived the
Marwari onslaught (Bird and Company was one of them) lived fairly healthy
lives right up to the mid-1960s and showed no obvious signs of panicking in
the post-colonial era and rushing home. The fact that the healthier managing
agencies remained in spite of Nehru not granting any commercial safeguard,
tends to reduce the explanatory power of two hypotheses: ’planned retreat’
and 1947 as the great divide.
Giving undue importance to European managing agencies also makes
1947 an unnecessarily important year in business history. According to the
‘watershed’ approach, expatriate firms did excellently before 1947 because
of their close links with the colonial State apparatus whose weakening and
final disintegration is then used to explain the Europeans’ fears, retreat and
fall. The basic problem with this view is that it requires us to assume that the
62
Tomlinson, op. cit.
/249
first post-colonial Government’s attitude to foreign capital or foreign control

of Indian capital was very different from that of its predecessor. But this
should be seriously questioned, given the growth of multinational
corporations in India. In 1950 there were approximately forty-three British
based MNCs having a paid-up capital of more than Rs. 250 million and
engaged in a wide variety of activities in the domestic market.6’ One cannot
resolve this contradictory picture by saying that MNCs were encouraged in
independent India because of their high technological content. For every
Guest Keen Williams, Chloride, Indian Oxygen and Westinghouse Saxby
and Farmer, was an equally large if not larger low technology firm, such as
Levers making soap, Colgate Palmolive selling toothpaste and ITC making
cigarettes.64 And in these relatively low technology products, the MNCs
were in direct conflict with the Indian bourgeoisie. Yet they survived and,
indeed, thrived-which casts doubt on the alleged influence of Indian
capitalists on industrial policy of the 1950s.
While political historians have examined the trends in and factors behind
the accelerated reduction in British political control since the 1930s, similar
hypotheses have not been forthcoming in the field of business history. We
have attempted to show that such a reduction indeed occured in Eastern
India, and much was due to the growth of Marwari entrepreneurs. This essay
attempts to make a case for greater richness in business history by looking at
the development of indigenous entrepreneurial groups during the colonial
period. This is not prompted by a sense of nationalistic pride at their possibly
superior entrepreneurial abilities. Rather, it follows from a belief (to twist a
phrase of Zinoviev’s) that even under colonialism, one must not auto-
matically paint capitalism ’white’.
63
B.R. Tomlinson, ’Private Foreign Investment in India 1920-1960,’ MAS, 1978,
pp. 676-77.
64
Here I disagree with the hypothesis set out by Aditya Mukherjee in his ’Indian Capitalist
Class and Foreign Capital,’Studies in History, 1979(1).

Then Came The Marwaris

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Then Came The Marwaris

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Then came the Marwaris:

Some aspects of the changes in the pattern

stand in their way as they promenaded down the Chowringhee.’ These

This essay attempts to trace the growth of Marwaris in modem industry in

Exchange. For one, this gives us a comparable, company-wise time-series

The Emergence of Marwaris, 1918-1929

It was, indeed, a pioneering venture into an uncharted, high technology

Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1919, Seventh edition.

In spite of such obvious European dominance, World War I and, to a

European controlled Tndian Jute Mills’ Association (IJMA) begged the

With such fluctuations in an otherwise prosperous decade, it is not sur-

accommodate people like Manindra Chandra Nundy, Bhupendra Narayan

impressive in jute, not so in coal-the process clearly shows that blanket

The situation rather different in the coal industry. Here, managing

million, the equity needs of an average sized joint-stock colliery company

This brings us to an important question. ’i the jute industry was organised

level time’. 41i

to be evolutionary in content they became familiar with A and so moved

have an implicit hypothesis that natives entered and prospered in areas

1939-1950: Consolidation Phase II and Diversification

community made a considerable fortune during the war. It is not surprising,

Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1942-43, 1945-47, 1949, 1952.

Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1942-43, 1945-47, 1949, 1952.

However, if we compare the relative positions of Europeans, Indians and

Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1945-47 and 1958.

first post-colonial Government’s attitude to foreign capital or foreign control

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