Transport Linkages in South Asia

Abstract

A recent study of the Industrial Revolution by Sydney Pollard — The Industrialisation of Europe 1760–1970— has shown that industrialization for the first century or so, being the consequence of individual decisions, was not so much a national as a regional phenomenon. It was not governments and planning agencies but conditions of the market, availability of labour, accessibility of raw materials and the state of transport and communications systems that determined which areas got industrialized and which remained undeveloped. Even in the “Workshop of the World” it was not Britain itself but specific parts (the Black country and Lancashire) which moved forward, while others (Cornwall and Shropshire) remained pre-industrial. This amiably anarchic process of growth, according to the principle of laissez-faire, was rudely interrupted in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by the actions of governments and the even more influential principle of nationalism. Protectionist tariffs, spiralling ever upwards, tried to exclude certain commodities; governments urged on industrialists to produce strategically vital goods, and each society sought to be less dependent on the foreigner. World War I accentuated this tendency to an enormous degree, not only by physically interrupting commerce but also by “import substitution.” In fact, it was the “import substitution” of the Chilean nitrates, a vital raw material for the manufacture of explosives and fertilizers, by Haber's nitrogen fixation process to produce ammonia that precipatated World War I. But for it Kaiser's Germany woruld never have dared to declare war. Ruthless pursuit of self-sufficiency can provoke a rogue reaction like World War I. The inter-war years, characterised by new frontiers and teriffic shortages of capital and further bouts of national rivalry, again checked the spread of industrialization—or at least ensured that the process was not purely an economic one. Far from what the Marxists call the “economic substructure” determining politics, political and ideological considerations determined economic development resulting as we all know, in such global catastrophes as the Great Depression and its aftermath in the twenties and thirties. Only in the period after World War II was the old trend revived and industrial recovery came about. Europe was, of course, now divided into two blocs; but within each of them, in their different ways, an impressive industrial growth took place, spreading into new regions in accord with those basic determinants of market, labour, raw materials, transport and communications. The role of governments is certainly much more pronounced in the modern world than in Adam Smith's day. But the relative failure of, say, the depressed regions of northern England or northern France, despite large-scale support, is a measure of the way things are going.