An Influential Relationship

Kamal Aron Mitra Chenoy’s The Rise of Big Business in India is a solidly researched and well-argued account of the relationship of Indian big business and the Government of India from the period immediately before independence, approximately from the 1935 Government of India Act, to 1966 (the Introduction says 1944 but I think that is an oversight). The book is based on a careful reading of a mass of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) documents, Purshottamdas Thakurdas’ papers, and an exhaustive and careful reading of secondary publications. The book comes to a set of very clearly specified conclusions (p 4). Few researchers would differ with many of these conclusions. With some of them, however, there would be many who would have reservations. Specifically, these conclusions are as follows:

(i) The FICCI is the representative of Indian big business or a segment of it, not industry or trade as a whole.