BOOK REVIEW 65 1. Colonial Burden It is important to start, in a study of this type, with the historical burden of colonial rule and of an industrial and economic development marked, scarred, distorted and stunted by colonial and, later, imperialist oppression. India was capitalistically the most developed of the colonial and dependent countries, but a characteristic feature of its economy was the overwhelming predominance of a backward agriculture, insufficiently and narrowly developed, and the dependence of the reproduction of fixed as well as working capital on the foreign market. Modern industry occupied a peculiar place on the system of social division of labour and the reproduction of capital. Colonial and landlord exploitation helped to retain the lower structures in the country's economy and, consequently, the traditional character of reproduction in the pre-capitalist structures. With reproduction being based here mainly on the output of the handicraft industries;, a practically independent cycle of reproduction remained intact in a wide sphere of the economy of India. The dragging of India into the international division of labour and the development of commodity-money and capitalist relations blurred this production cycle, and reduced its scale. But the lower structures were unable to utilize the modern means of production. The breakdown of the pre-capitalist reproduction and the introduction of the output of modern industry into these structures were, during the colonial period, confined largely to the marketing of consumer goods. For all its advantages, factory production, even upto the first few years of independence, played a very small role in the supply of consumer goods to the lower structures. Even as late as 1952-53, nearly half of the consumption in the rural areas was satisfied either by domestic production, or by direct exchange with craftsmen. The greater part of the cash income of the peasants was used for buying handicraft goods. Two parallel cycles of reproduction existed: the pre-capitalist in the lower structures, and the capitalist in the capitalist structures. The production of consumer goods accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the total value of gross industrial production. The development of heavy industry was rudimentary. The total investment in the capitalist sector in 1951 is estimated at Rs 3700 crores. But the gross output value of heavy industry (excluding the cost of repair operations, the production of consumer durables and electric power) was only Rs 370 crores to Rs 380 crores—approximately equal to the annual deductions into the depreciation fund. The reproduction of constant and variable capital, both in industry and in the entire capitalist sector, depended on foreign trade relations with the world market, particularly with the British market. This was a measure of the backwardnesss of industry in colonial India. In the backward economy, modern industry was only loosely con^