Amiya Kumar Bagchi, the great Marxist economist passed away on 28th November 2024. He was 88 years old. He was born in Murshidabad in a middle-class household. A bright student since his school days he studied at the Presidency College, Calcutta followed by a doctoral degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK. At the master’s level, he stood first in the university. At Cambridge, he studied under the giants of the economics discipline such as Joan Robinson and Maurice Dobb. Before going to Cambridge, Bagchi was interested in game theory and quantitative economics. Whilst at Cambridge, his interests changed to economic history and Marxian economics. This was a time when the longue durée sociological study of economics was a prestigious pursuit. Dobb himself had written Studies in the Development of Capitalism which remains one of the most outstanding Marxist analyses of English and European economic history.
Amiya Bagchi’s doctoral thesis, which was later published as Private Investment in Colonial India, 1900-1939, was a sectoral analysis of the Indian economy under colonial rule. The book included a chapter-wise study of cotton, jute, iron and steel, cement, sugar and paper industries in India. Bagchi showed that the industrial development of India least occupied the attention of the imperial bureaucrats ruling India. Only some sectors were marked by growth which was the result of the British encouragement of foreign trade in keeping up the reputation of the Government of India in the London money market. He also showed that despite the budget surpluses emanating from the stability of the rupee under the gold exchange standard, the British government seldom invested in the development of India or reduced the tax burden on Indians. The tax system continued to be regressive, with land revenues constituting more than a third of the total revenues.
Bagchi's study also showed that up till 1914, the British practised a policy of complete free trade in India. After 1923, the government adopted a policy of tariff protection towards different Indian industries. This period also made the Indian industries taste blood. Buoyed by the charm of profits, within a decade the Indian bourgeoisie started merging their brooks with the Indian National Movement.
In the essays collected in Colonialism and Indian Economy published by the Oxford University Press, Prof. Bagchi further unmasked the role of British imperialism in de-industrializing India. In the chapter De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar, 1809-1901, he showed that from 1809 to 1901 the percentage of the population engaged in the local cotton industry fell from 60% to 15.2%. Through district records, he showed that the Manchester (locally called Markin) cotton invasion had outpriced the country cloth as a piece of country cloth cost Rs. 1-4 whereas a piece of Markin cost less than half of the price. The impact of de-industrialization did not fit in the traditional (and comfortable) shift of labour from one sector to another. Since sole dependency on agriculture was made difficult due to British policies, the out-of-job weaver seasonally shifted to agriculture and returned to his single handloom at home to produce coarse cloth for the poorer people. Bagchi concluded, ‘‘the survival of the handloom industry was more an index of the poverty of agriculture to which the policies pursued by the British government pushed the weavers and of the generally low level of ordinary Indians than of any innate strength of the handloom industry under the conditions of capitalist colonialism.’’ The process of de-industrialization also had a domino effect on other industries such as tent-making, making of the ornaments of lac, bidriware, glasswork, making of toothpowder, manufacture of sindur, and blanket weaving.
Another important contribution of Prof. Bagchi was the article Some International Foundations of Capitalist Growth and Underdevelopment published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 1972. Among many important claims in the article, Prof. Bagchi showed that the assumption mainstream economists had about investment profitability in new industrial countries of North America in the 19th century was flawed as it did not take into account the exploitation of China, India, Indonesia and Latin American republics. It was not the competitive mechanism of trade (as mainstream economists would have it) but various forms of monopoly, pre-capitalist modes of exploitation, political control, violence and plunder that served as the instruments of unrequited surplus extraction. Every student of economics should read this paper before the spell of mainstream economics is cast on him/her.
Overall, Prof. Bagchi authored 9 books and edited 9 volumes. He regularly contributed to stellar Indian journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and Social Scientist.
In his death, Marxism has lost a knight. In his death, Indian academia has lost a gem. His shoes are too big to fill. Adieu Comrade!
