During the colonial period, as the manufacturing boomed in Britain; this resulted in a threat to the existence of Indian older traditional manufacturing centers like Surat and Masulipatnam. This process of the decline of older urban centers is known as:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → De-industrialisation
Note 1: The given answer is as per the official NTA Answer Key. However, there seems to be an ambiguity in the question. It asks for the name of the process of the decline of older urban centers, while the book names two results side by side: ‘deindustrialisation in some sectors, and decline of old urban centres’. Going strictly by the question’s last line, one can argue for Option (3) De-urbanisation, as explained below.
Option (1) Globalisation — Incorrect. Globalisation is the stretching of social and economic relationships throughout the world, so that goods, money, information and people move across countries. It does not describe the fall of Indian towns under colonial rule, which came from Britain’s factories taking away the market of Indian crafts.
Option (2) Urbanisation — Incorrect. Urbanisation is the growth of towns and cities, with a larger share of people living in them. The question describes the opposite: old cities such as Surat and Masulipatnam declining. Indeed, unlike Britain, the first impact of British industrialisation in India sent more people into agriculture, not into towns.
Option (3) De-urbanisation — Incorrect, as per the NTA answer key. De-urbanisation means the decline of towns and cities: urban centres lose their trade, people and importance, and a smaller share of the population lives in them. This is what happened to Surat and Masulipatnam, so the word fits the last line of the question. But the cause the question itself describes, Britain’s booming factories taking away the market of India’s traditional manufactures, is deindustrialisation, and the decline of the old cities came along with it.
Option (4) De-industrialisation — Correct. Deindustrialisation is the decline of a country’s own industry when its products lose their market. Just as manufacturing boomed in Britain, India’s traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures declined in the face of Manchester competition, and the old centres that lived on this trade, such as Surat and Masulipatnam, declined further while Bombay and Madras grew.
Note 2: The concept in Option (3), ‘de-urbanisation’, is not in NCERT (2025-26); explained here for the benefit of the students.
NCERT (2025-26): “The Colonial Experience … In India the impact of the very same British industrialisation led to deindustrialisation in some sectors, and decline of old urban centres. Just as manufacturing boomed in Britain, traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures from India declined in the face of Manchester competition. This period also saw the further decline of cities such as Surat and Masulipatnam while Bombay and Madras grew. When the British took over Indian states, towns like Thanjavur, Dhaka, and Murshidabad lost their courts and, therefore, some of their artisans and court gentry.…” |