Cottage Industries

Cottage Industries means the manufacture of goods at home by manual labor with a small capital, on a small scale, by a small numbers of workers, often comprising members of a single family. It is one of the most important industries in India.

There was a time when Indian homes and Indian villages used to hum with activities connected with various types of cottage industries, and some of them acquired great reputation even in foreign countries on the account of the exquisite workmanship and artistic beauty of the products. But during the British period many of those industries were either deliberately crushed out of existence or languished for lack of support of the rich, or were unable to withstand the competition offered by machine-made goods. This decline of our cottage industries undermined the economic stability of rural India.

Some people in India regarded cottage industry wholly out of date in this machine age. It is, in their view, an attempt to introduce bullock –carts in the world of cars and airplanes. There are others who want to retain it not only in the period of transition to industrialization but even afterwards with a view to establishing an equilibrium in the economic life of the country.

Indian environment and conditions are more favorable to the growth of cottage industries than those of any other country. Their revival does not mean return to medievalism or total rejection of modern methods. Mechanical inventions, which involve the use of electricity, may be freely used to ensure better production with less labor. The problem of capital, raw material and marketing may be solved by state aid and cooperative systems.

Cottage industries have some intrinsic merits too. They can be run with a small capital. The work is done in congenial atmosphere of home.

Besides, being labor-intensive, cottage industries can play an important part in solving the problem of unemployment in India, which has, at present, become a great problem. They can also provide an alternative occupation to agricultural labor during off-seasons.

The advantage of cottage industries, as enumerated above, are some of the reasons for their survival in this age of machinery. Another reason is that there still exist a class of people who prefer goods by cottage industries.

Having regard to great importance of the cottage industries, they have a prominent place in India’s Ninth Five-Year Plan. These must be encouraged and enlarged.