THE INDIAN INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 



By ALFRED CHATTERTON 



Director of Industries, Madras 



The Need of a System of Industrial Training 



The publication in 1884 of the Report of the Royal Commission 

 on Technical Education drew the attention of administrators in 

 India to the fact that no adequate provision had been made by 

 the Indian Educational Departments of systematic instruction 

 in the scientific principles underlying industrial processes. The 

 interest of the educated public was languidly excited and vague 

 notions became current that the acknowledged decay of Indian 

 manufactures could be arrested if arrangements were made to 

 remedy the defects in the existing educational machinery. 

 Accordingly, in the course of the next few years, each Province 

 took action in this direction and sanction was accorded to such 

 measures as the local governments considered to be imme- 

 diately necessary. One result of the application of European 

 ideas on the subject of technical education was the establish- 

 ment of the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute in Bombay, 

 where the cotton-spinning industry was already firmly estab- 

 lished ; as another result the engineering school at Seebpore, 

 near Calcutta, was reorganised and expanded to provide for 

 the needs of Bengal, where the manufacture of jute, coal-mining 

 and mechanical engineering were local industries of consider- 

 able and growing importance. Both these institutions are now 

 valuable centres of recruitment for the organised industries of 

 their respective Presidencies ; that they have not reached the 

 standard of excellence we are accustomed to expect in similar 

 institutions in Europe and America is due to the fact that 

 Indians do not regard an industrial career with any favour ; they 

 only take to it when they are convinced that they have no 

 prospect of success in more congenial occupations. 



In other parts of India it was obvious that modern industrial 

 enterprise was too feebly developed to support either specialised 



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