Abstract

"Growth of Modern Industry, Transfer of Corporate Power, and the Role of Community: Evidence from Listed Joint-Stock Firms in India, 1920s – 1970s"

Pallavi Singh, Queen's University, Belfast (psingh05@qub.ac.uk)

In the first half of twentieth century, the ethnicity of the ownership of both new and old industries in India became a source of contention to contemporary policy makers and entrepreneurs. Foreign owners had dominated Indian industry in the nineteenth century, occasionally in partnership with Indian entrepreneurs. Some Indian entrepreneurs, often with mercantile origins, used trading profits to invest in modern industry. As questions of Indian nationalism and political independence emerged, calls for exit of British economic interests encouraged Indian-led industrial investment. Post-independence in 1947, Indian government promoted efforts to ‘Indianize’ the economy. These led to a transfer of corporate control in the twentieth century. Deemed as a dramatic change in the composition of industrial entrepreneurship of India, the timing and extent of this transfer is debated. Several propositions about the development and control of Indian industry hinge on periods of transfer of corporate control, and the ethnicity of entrepreneurs. Within these debates, the role of community has been identified as potentially key to explaining these transitions. Historically, community served as a key economic institution in India in the absence of developed markets and state support to economic activity. This paper focusses on this under-studied area of research by presenting quantitative estimates for ownership of modern industry by nationalities and communities of board directors, trends in the transfer of corporate power across industries, key periods for Indianisation of joint stock firms, and key differences in community’s response to corporate ownership during the period. It also unveils industries that were dominated by community networks right from the 1920s, as against the assumption that development of Indian corporate economy was solely a product of European entrepreneurship. The paper lends to a reassessment of India’s industrialisation debates and opens questions on the role of community in enabling the development of modern Indian industry.