Of Traders, Usurers and British Capital: Managing Agencies and the Dalmia Jain Case

The years between 1947 and 1966, covering the period from independence to the end of the third Five Year Plan, provided the arena for the most acute debates over the content of industrial development. Especially debated at the time was the form of industrial organisation that was appropriate for the private sector under a system of socially regulated industrialisation. In particular, the Managing Agency System, linking a closely held decision making organisation to joint stock companies came under extensive scrutiny. It has been suggested in the paper that by using the frame of joint stock companies as a means to aggrandisement, the Dalmia Jain Group had behaved in a qualitatively different way to the “straightforward” cases of tax evasion of Tatas, Birlas, and even the stock market speculation of Haridas Mundhra. By the late 1960s, the most backward forms of capital had been removed from control of industrial enterprises The tenaciousness of the struggle waged by usurer capital is only an indication of the complexity of the process of development of industrial capital in colonial societies.