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UPSC 2024 GS-I · 15 marks · 250 words

How far was the Industrial Revolution in England responsible for the decline of handicrafts and cottage industries in India?

भारत में हस्तशिल्प और कुटीर उद्योगों के पतन के लिए इंग्लैंड की औद्योगिक क्रांति किस सीमा तक उत्तरदायी थी?

What “Critically examine” demands

examine both sides AND arrive at a reasoned judgement; the criticism must be substantive, not a token final paragraph.

The characteristic failure: balanced description that never commits to a view.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • Mechanism: one-way free trade after 1813 Charter Act — Manchester cloth flooding India while Indian textiles faced British tariffs
  • Evidence of deindustrialisation: Dacca muslin collapse; weaver distress in W. Bengal famine commissions; Horace Wilson and R.C. Dutt's Economic History as contemporary indictment
  • 'How far' — other causes: end of court patronage after 1857, railways deepening import penetration, changing tastes of a colonised elite
  • Historiographical balance: Morris D. Morris's scepticism vs Amiya Bagchi's deindustrialisation estimates (Gangetic Bihar data)
  • Conclusion: Industrial Revolution necessary but not sufficient — colonial policy converted technological change into Indian ruin

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