About Swadesh Entrepreneurs
• Economic swadeshi emerged in the second part of the nineteenth century.
- In 1849, Gopal Hari Deshmukh was among the first to advocate for economic swadeshi.
• However, the collegiate faction of Arya Samajists in Punjab deserves credit for translating it into a call to action.
Pre-Swadesh Action
• In 1894, a group of middle-class Punjabis with western educations, including Lala Lajpat Rai, founded the Punjab National Bank. This was the first significant bank owned by Indians.
• Lala Harkishan Lal subsequently founded a number of joint-stock corporations. These included insurance companies (Bharat Insurance was the first significant Indian-owned insurance company) and flour mills, among others.
• In Bombay, the Parsi attorney Ardeshir Burjorji Sorabji Godrej realized the significance of domestic production. In 1897, he founded Godrej & Boyce.
• Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray established Bengal Chemicals, the first pharmaceutical enterprise in India.
Swadesh Businesses
• The proclamation of the Partition of Bengal (1905) sparked a surge of Bengali nationalism and reignited the Bengali spirit of enterprise. Numerous Tagore family members and others routinely organized Swadeshi fairs.
• National Insurance Company (1906) and Hindustan Cooperative Insurance (1907) were founded.
• In 1906, the most prominent swadeshi enterprise, Banga Luxmi Cotton Mill, was founded by Bengal’s most prominent citizens.
• The true accomplishment of Bengali swadeshi entrepreneurs was venturing into new industries using their technical expertise.
• Anandabazar and Jugantor have emerged as thriving media enterprises. The majority of these ventures were unsuccessful.
o They were constructed with the modest funds of small proprietors and the savings of professionals.
o They had technical expertise but not always business savvy.
• Science promotion was one of the most significant contributions of the Swadeshi period. Technical education for meritorious pupils was provided in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Some of them returned to establish prosperous enterprises such as Calcutta Chemicals, Calcutta Potteries, etc.
• The National Education Movement (1905-1938) contributed to the establishment of colleges and schools, and one of its affiliated institutions evolved into Jadavpur University.
• A revitalized nation took great pride in the accomplishments of scientists such as P.C. Ray and J.C. Bose, with a prominent publication dubbing Jagadish Chandra’s plant response experiment “the greatest swadeshi event of 1906.”
• Tribhuvandas Kalyandas Gajjar established two modest chemical manufacturing facilities in Bombay. In 1907, he and B D Amin, a wealthy Baroda landlord, founded Alembic, the first chemical enterprise in Western India.
• The Tatas profited the most from the prevalent swadeshi sentiment. Dorabji Tata’s fundraising efforts in London were unsuccessful. Upon his return to India, he appealed to his fellow Indians and received a phenomenal response. In only three weeks, the Tatas could amass a staggering 16,300,000 pounds. This assisted him in establishing a contemporary steel factory in India.
Swadesh in Day-to-Day Life
• As nationalism increased, there was a distinct shift in consumer culture. People desired to display their patriotism with Indiamade/regional products.
• Business ventures also appealed to patriotic sentiments or Indian sensibilities – Banga Luxmi advertised Bengali fabric. Godrej advertised their detergent as the first vegetable soap in the world, and Rabindranath Tagore himself endorsed it.
• As a result, the production, distribution, advocacy, and consumption of such products (even when of inferior quality and expensive) became an expression of patriotism and a means of contributing to nation-building. In the 1930s, another generation of Swadeshi enterprises emerged. This time, in response to Gandhiji’s call to boycott foreign products.
Convergence
- The concept of trusteeship resonated strongly with the Indian business elite. Previously, it was an alliance of interests, but it has since evolved into a close personal bond. Gandhiji’s closest associates were businessmen including G D Birla and Jamnalal Bajaj.
• There are two significant turning points in the development of this relationship:
o In 1938, Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose appointed Jawaharlal Nehru to head the National Planning Commission. Members of this Commission included prominent industrialists such as Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Walchand Hirachand, A D Shroff, and Ambalal Sarabhai, as well as the technocrat M Visvesvaraya and the scientist Meghna Saha.
o In 1944-1945, eight prominent industrialists – J R D Tata, G D Birla, Ardeshir Dalal, Lala Shri Ram, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, A D Shroff, Purushottamdas Thakurdas, and John Matthai – published a plan for the economic development of independent India.
- This ‘Bombay Plan’ defined the strategy for doubling agricultural output and increasing the industrial sector by a factor of five within 15 years. They acknowledged that without government support, this would be impossible.
- Even though it was never officially acknowledged, post-independence economic planning followed the same path of State interventions and a mixed economy with a substantial public sector.
The conclusion
- During the Swadesh period, Bengal witnessed for the first time a concerted effort by educated middle-class entrepreneurs to establish businesses on the basis of their technical expertise. Similarly, the modernization of banking in India was the result of these Swadeshi-inspired entrepreneurs.
- The swadeshi period of Indian business history demonstrated how to transition from traditional commerce to the modern industrial and financial sectors.
