Dr. Ambedkar on Industrialisation: An Economist Diagnosis of India’s Poverty

— By Ritesh Jyoti

This is a guest post by Ritesh Jyoti. Ritesh Jyoti is pursuing his Master’s in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He studies and writes on the Phule-Ambedkarite movement and Kanshiram’s politics. He is active on social media as Riteshjyotii.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar arriving at the Government House in New Delhi to meet with the British Cabinet Mission in April 1946

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was not only the chief architect of the Indian Constitution but also one of the most formidable economists India has ever produced. Trained at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, Dr. Ambedkar brought rare analytical clarity to questions of poverty, land, labour and production. Long before development planning became a formal discipline in India, Babasaheb identified the structural limits of agrarian dependence and argued with urgency that industrialization was essential for India’s economic survival.

Following text are the writings of Babasaheb on subject:

Industrialization and the Agrarian Illusion

Industrialization of India has been in the air for many years. But one fai ls to notice any serious drive to bring about industrialization. There are still some who pay only lip service to it. Others look upon it as a fad, if not a craze.”

There are very many who are never tired of preaching that India is an agricultural country and therefore the best thing to do is to devote all energy to improve agriculture and not to run after industrialization.”

Nobody needs to be told that India is primarily an agricultural country. Everybody knows it. What is surprising is that very few people seem to realize what a great misfortune it is.”

I know this will not be readily admitted. What more evidence is wanted to prove that this is a misfortune than the famine which is stalking Bengal and other parts of India and where so many from the agricultural population are dying daily from want of food or from want of purchasing power?”

To my mind there can be no greater proof necessary to show that India’s agriculture has failed and failed miserably when it is as plain as anything could be that India which is engaged in producing nothing but food does not even produce sufficient food to feed its people.”

**Population, Land, and the Structure of Poverty**

What is this due to? The poverty of India, to my mind, is due entirely to its being made dependent upon agriculture.

Population in India grows decade by decade in geometrical progression. As against this unlimited growth of population what is available for cultivation is not merely a limited amount of land but a limited amount of land whose fertility is diminishing year by year.”

India is caught between two sides of a pincer, the one side of which is a progressive increase in population and the other is a progressive increase in the deterioration of the soil.”

The result is that at the end of a decade we are left with a negative balance between population and production and a constant squeezing of the standard of living.”

At every decade this negative balance between population and production is increasing in an alarming degree, leaving India with the inheritance of poverty, more poverty and chronic poverty.”

**A Rot Has Set In**

This rot, I feel sure, is not going to be stopped by organizing agricultural exhibitions or animal shows or by propaganda in favour of better manuring.”

It can stop only when agriculture is made profitable.

Nothing can open possibilities of making agriculture in India profitable except a serious drive in favour of industrialization.

Industrialisation as the Only Structural Remedy

For it is industrialization alone which can drain away the excess of population which is exerting such enormous pressure on land into gainful occupations other than agriculture.

Babasaheb analysis of industrialization is not merely confined to the colonial period. It speaks directly to the present, where agrarian distress, surplus labour and chronic poverty continue to define the lives of millions. To engage with Babasaheb seriously is to read him fully, patiently and in context, as an economist who understood poverty as a structural condition rather than a moral failure.

Readers are strongly encouraged to engage with the Writings and Speeches of Dr. Ambedkar, which preserve Babasaheb’s economic thought in its original rigor and depth. Visit BAWS.in, a dedicated digital archive that hosts authenticated volumes, original and searchable texts of Dr. Ambedkar’s writings for students, researchers and the wider public.

Suggested reading:

Small Holdings in India and Their Remedies

https://baws.in/books/baws/EN/Volume_01/pdf/470

This text powerfully complements Dr. Ambedkar’s critique of agrarian dependency and explains why land fragmentation, surplus labour, and rural immiseration cannot be resolved without structural economic transformation.

BAWS.in

(Let’s read Babasaheb!)