Great Britain and the Development of India's Railways

Abstract

A Striking disparity exists between India's ranking as a railway power and its ranking by any other modern economic category, such as coal mined, iron and steel produced, power generated, value added by all manufacturing, or national income received per capita. Throughout the twentieth century India has had one of the world's five largest railway systems, but by most other modern categories India's economy has been among the world's weakest and least developed. I propose to begin by recounting the way in which India's railway system was developed under British leadership in the century after 1850; then I intend to turn to some possible connections between the special types of railway organization that Britain sponsored in India and the relative lack of development of other sectors of India's economy, particularly modern industry.