Industrial man of India: some observations and reflections

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyse the nature of industrial culture emerging in India in the background of the concepts regarding the industrial,society prevaling in contemporary social science. it examines the classical hypothesis that the norms and institutions of the traditional Indian society are incompatible with the social and economic pre-conditions of modern technology, and argues that Indian entrepreneurs and workers found it relatively easy to move from the rural-agricultural nexus of traditional India to modiern industrial work due to a degree of flexibility inherent in the traditional society aS u'ell as the unique interaction between Indian and Western intellectuals during the British rule. An attempt is then made to analyse the psychol0gical, social, economic and political forces influ encing the Indian industrial man and the implications of these forces! for maintenanceb and development of a social order Indians may want to achieve.