By looking at the decline of the jute industry, this study assesses the successes and failures of Britain’s managed economy. It also addresses broader arguments about the political economy of twentieth-century Britain.

Samita Sen's history of labouring women in Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries considers how social constructions of gender shaped their lives. Dr Sen demonstrates how - in contrast to the experience of their male counterparts - the long-term trends in the Indian economy devalued women's labour, establishing patterns of urban migration and changing gender equations within the family. She relates these trends to the spread of dowry, enforced widowhood and child marriage. The book provides insight into the lives of poor urban women who were often perceived as prostitutes or social pariahs. Even trade unions refused to address their problems and they remained on the margins of organized political protest. The study will make a signficant contribution to the understanding of the social and economic history of colonial India and to notions of gender construction.

Dundee had an interesting role to play in the jute trade, but the main player in the story of jute was Calcutta. This book follows the relationship of jute to empire, and discusses the rivalry between the Scottish and Indian cities from the 1840s to the 1950s and reveals the architecture of jute's place in the British Empire. The book adopts significant fresh approaches to imperial history, and explores the economic and cultural landscapes of the British Empire. Jute had been grown, spun and woven in Bengal for centuries before it made its appearance as a factory-manufactured product in world markets in the late 1830s. The book discusses the profits made in Calcutta during the rise of jute between the 1880s and 1920s; the profits reached extraordinary levels during and after World War I. The Calcutta jute industry entered a crisis period even before it was pummelled by the depression of the 1930s. The looming crisis stemmed from the potential of the Calcutta mills to outproduce world demand many times over. The St Andrew's Day rituals in Calcutta, begun three years before the founding of the Indian Jute Mills Association. The ceremonial occasion helps the reader to understand what the jute wallahs meant when they said they were in Calcutta for 'the greater glory of Scotland'. The book sheds some light on the contentious issues surrounding the problematic, if ever-intriguing, phenomenon of British Empire. The jute wallahs were inextricably bound up in the cultural self-images generated by British imperial ideology.

The jute commodity system as prevalent in the Indian subcontinent is a conglomeration of paradoxes. Jute was once called the golden fibre on account of its contribution to means of livelihood to millions of farmers, traders, manufacturers in the unorganized sector, mill workers in the organized sector as well scores of people employed in the service sector relating to trading, manufacturing and exports of jute and jute goods. Jute industry along with textile manufacturing provided the foundation of modern manufacturing industry in India. Simultaneously, this industry was also the fountain head of the growth of private entrepreneurship and capital in India. Most of the traditional Industrial Houses in India grew out of trading and manufacturing of jute and jute goods, coal and tea. On the other hand most of the farmers involved in cultivation of natural fibres like jute are small and marginal farmers. Without alternative avenues of gainful employment elsewhere, these millions in South Asia would be deprived of a part of their livelihood. The entire commodity chain of natural fibres is characterized by low productivity, low value addition, high volumes and low returns. The advent and discovery of mineral oil helped exploit cheap HDPE and PP polyethylene sacks, which started replacing the natural fibre based packaging materials. As a result, the jute industry got wiped out from Europe, America and the Far East. Today, it is survived in the Indian subcontinent and to a lesser extent in Brazil. The unique feature of the volume is that it focuses on the first hand experience of the policy-makers and other stakeholders in the jute commodity system, who are confronted with a dilemma of reviving a declining economic subsector. At this juncture, when there is need for a Commodity Development Strategy suitable to the ethos of a commodity like the jute fibre, the present, volumes attempts to devise such a strategy thorough analysis of the system based on authentic and up-to-date information. The Book furnishes an erudite analysis and stock-taking of the jute commodity system. This analysis points out to the fact that there is a need for a holistic, systemic approach to the problems being faced by this sector focusing on the economic exploitation of the whole jute plant; holistic research for addressing productivity and processing efficiency in the entire commodity chain of jute; and creating a network of organisations for advocacy for jute and allied fibres, which would focus on repositioning the golden fibre as sustainable and eco-friendly commodity with the help of green and sustainable development advocacy groups. The Commodity Development Strategy highlights the need for greater effort for significant degree of product diversification which would entail significant consumption of the fibre or fabric in volume terms. The volume ends with an optimistic note with ideas of inclusive development under the Millennium Development Goals and Carbon Credits Sustainable Development under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the welcome paradigm shifts in the approach to the jute sector. The effort by Sh Roul is a timely one on the eve of the observance of 2009 as International Year for Natural Fibres by the United Nations. The book is quite comprehensive with its focus on a wide range of issues pertaining to the jute agri-commodity system addressed against a historical background and from macro-economic analytical perspective. The volume offers stimulating reading for those interested in the dynamics of agricultural commodity systems like jute and allied fibres. The book is expected to help sensitise national governments, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations towards the eco-sustainability of jute as a natural fibre. The book can serve as an excellent reference book for post-graduate students in economics, jute and textiles management, development studies, regional development and agriculture and agro-marketing.