Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
India’s handloom sector once rivaled the world—but British imports crushed it. Master artisans became wage laborers, and with them, centuries of entrepreneurial legacy unraveled.
British goods entered India duty-free. Indian goods? Taxed or blocked. The result: a local business landscape bulldozed by foreign monopoly—and a rising dependence on colonial paychecks.
India didn’t just lose money—it hemorrhaged it. Profits, pensions, and taxes flowed straight to Britain, stripping generations of capital that could’ve seeded homegrown industries.
Crushing land taxes and a web of moneylenders kept cultivators broke and powerless. With no capital to start businesses, entire rural economies were trapped in survival mode.
As artisans lost patrons, factory jobs became lifelines. Craft turned to labor. The economy flipped—from self-run ventures to paycheck dependency, one displaced worker at a time.
The colonial system made desk jobs the new aspiration. British-built railways and admin offices didn’t just hire—they rewired ambition. Risk became reckless, and salary became status.
British-controlled firms ruled commerce, while Indians became junior partners—or weren’t let in at all. Entrepreneurship wasn’t encouraged—it was fenced off.
English education became the golden ticket—but it taught clerical skills, not creativity. The entrepreneur became the exception, not the goal. Jobs weren’t a fallback—they were the finish line.
Generations learned to equate safety with success. Risk was punished, innovation sidelined, and the idea of “starting something” quietly disappeared from dinner table conversations.
Representative pic