Changes in Consumption Pattern and the Growth of Small-Scale and Traditional Industries in India : 1860-1950

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1. The project organized an international workshop titled "Toward a History of Consumption in South Asia : 1850-1950" at Pune, India in December 2005, where 16 scholars from five countries presented their papers. These papers will be published by a leading academic publisher in India.2. The main findings the project has made are :(1) In India, consumption patterns had differed by community and class. These traditional patterns changed since the end of the 19th century. The changes were not simply towards westernization but also towards reviving and creating a part of "traditional" customs.(2) The changes in consumption patterns were influenced by transformations in social structure. The emancipation of lower classes in rural and urban societies led them to diversify their consumption items and partly to adopt consumption patterns that had been traditionally considered upper classes' customs.(3) The most people in urban as well as rural India expanded their consumption of cheap varieties of modern factory products like hosiery goods and matches.(4) Artisans in traditional industries generally adopted new machines and technologies, as well as organized themselves into a new system of production in which merchants could quickly communicate market information and new designs to artisans. Thus adapting themselves to the new environment, these so-called traditional industries could start a new development catering to newly created demands.(5) The inter-war period witnessed an increase in wage level of agricultural laborers except for Bengal etc.(6) These changes towards new patterns of consumption among common people were stimulated by India's trades with Asian countries as exemplified by imports of textiles and other miscellaneous goods from Japan and China and of rice from Burma rather than by imports from Europe. Peoples in Asia seem, to some extent, to share a common pattern of changes in their consumption customs.