Private Sector: How it Grew

One of the notable features of the developments in India during the colo­nial period was that despite what may be called perpetuation of her underdevelop­ment and her structural retrogression. ‘India had a larger industrial sector, with a stronger element of indigenous enter­prise, than most underdeveloped countries of the world’. The present work seems to set for itself the task of analysing the conflict-ridden process of growth of pri­vate corporate sector­—the main orga­nizational form, assumed by Indian, like most capitalist processes, of industrial development—in order to offer some explanations for ‘the overall failure of that sector to transform the economy from a predominantly agricultural to a predominantly industrial one’. Apart from bringing out the actual details of the process of industrial deve­lopment and the growth of corporate business from many primary and secon­dary sources, the book also attempts to analyse various theories and explanations which have been put forth for the pur­pose. It has also attempted to place the actual behaviour of private investment in the framework of some theoretical for­mulations as well as in the context of overall environment of industrial growth.