Labor problems in the industrialization of India

In the long view, history is likely to recount that in the generation after the Second World War the underdeveloped countries of the world began a massive effort toward industrialization. They are seeking to end their pov erty, disease, ignorance and backwardness; they are determined rapidly to nar row the inequalities that have been growing in the last century between the few rich Western nations and the poor countries which comprise the mass of humanity. No one who has seen at first hand the intense aspirations, the resolute determination, and the apparent willingness to bear almost any cost (while not overlooking the immensity of the obstacles) can doubt that e goal of an industrial society will be widely achieved before the end of the the twentieth century.

The economic, social, and political institutions of these countries are in a plastic state, under the necessities of the industrializing process, as they change from established agricultural forms to institutions consonant with the inner logic of the an industrial society. The present generation-and possibly the next strategic period in which the once-and-for-all transformation takes place from an agricultural to an industrial society. As an early industrial society is bent so shall its mature forms grow. No truth is more essential to perceive in the Western world than that the present generation is the crucial period for molding the future forms of the societies that will emerge to the industrial order. This view gives a sense of urgency and destiny to the present hour.

No country recently embarked on industrialization is in a more strategic position nor of more inherent interest than India: its population is approach ing 400 million; its size and location destine an even greater role of leader ship among the divided nations of the world; its progress toward industriali zation is inevitably compared within India and abroad with the records of China and the U.S.S.R. in Asia, both of whom use harsher methods; the Western traditions of political liberty and an associated legal system inherited from almost two hundred years of British rule are being tested against the stern necessities of a rapid rate of industrialization.