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Question
Describe the role of early entrepreneurs in India in the development of industries.
Solution
Indian entrepreneurs play a vital role in foreign trade. They have managed to foster Indian products in the foreign market and give international recognition to the Indian products. They have traded their products with outside countries and made them popular.
The British in India began exporting opium to China and took tea from China to England. Many Indians participated in this trade by providing finance, procuring supplies and shipping consignments. In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade and established six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s.
In Bombay, Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata built huge industrial empires in India. They accumulated their initial wealth partly from exports to China and partly from raw cotton shipments to England. Merchants from Madras traded with Burma, the Middle East, and East Africa. Other trading activities included carrying goods from one place to another, banking, transferring funds between cities and financing traders. However, Indian traders were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods and had to export raw materials and food grains required by the British. They were also gradually edged out of the shipping business.
