VIRTUAL   EXHIBITION   SECTIONS
0 Index, Introduction, Entrance Panel	1 History in the Making	2 Building India's Industries	3 The Land and the People	4 Dance and Temple Sculpture

Index to Section 2 Section 2 text Panel 10: Industry, 1950's Captions & Smaller Image Larger Image

Section 2 text SECTION 2:   BUILDING INDIA'S INDUSTRIES Gandhi did not wish to transform India's agricultural economy into a modern industrial one, as he believed that this process had dire effects on the environment and the daily lives of the people. He wanted to continue, on a larger scale, the self-contained economy of the traditional village. But Nehru, the first prime minister, wanted to lift the masses out of their poverty rapidly. He saw that the only way to achieve this would be through industrialization and technical training. India began to revitalize her old industries and to build new factories, dams and power stations soon after achieving independence In the 1950s, Nehru's "new temples" of concrete and steel began to tower over the rice and wheat fields. But the workers--digging in the mines, rolling steel in the mills, processing jute, and loading bales--continued to do much of their work manually. This produced strange images, such as contingents of village women, carrying cement mixtures in pans on their heads, walking against the giant sheet piling of a construction site.   - Sunil Janah All photographs, and text:   © Sunil Janah 1939-2000

 

Top Row: Plant owned by Indian Aluminium, in Bihar.   sf.065 Steel melting shop, Tata Iron & Steel Works, Jamshedpur, 1957.   sf.066 A water tank gets hoisted into place at Burn & Co's steel works, near Calcutta.   sf.067 Middle Row: Young trainees at Tata Iron & Steel Co., Jamshedpur, Bihar, eastern India.   sf.068 Coal miners in an underground pit, Bihar, 1952.   sf.069 Hindustan Steel plant, Rourkela, Orissa.   sf.070 Bottom Row: Coke ovens, Tata Iron & Steel Co., Jamshedpur, Bihar, eastern India.   sf.071 Workers at thermal-power plant in Bokaro, Bihar, one of independent India's first.   sf.072 Santhal tribal girl working in a coal mine.   sf.073 Train dumping slag outside the steel plants of Tata Iron & Steel Co.   sf.074	Panel 10:   Industry, 1950's (captions & smaller image)
	Photographs © Sunil Janah

 

 

Panel 10:   Industry, 1950's   (Larger Image)