Which type of well-managed industry was established in India at the time of independence?

Correct — B. At Independence India's industrial base was narrow, and cotton textiles and iron and steel are the pair on offer here that was already established and running at scale.

Cotton mills had been Indian-owned and profitable since the 1850s, concentrated in Bombay and Ahmedabad.

Iron and steel meant above all the Tata Iron and Steel Company, incorporated in 1907 and producing steel at Jamshedpur from 1912 — a genuine heavy industry, which is what makes this the pair.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Cement and Sugar — Cement and sugar did have mills by 1947, but both were later arrivals and much smaller in scale, and neither was a heavy industry.
• (c)
  Steel and Electronics — Steel is half right, but electronics manufacturing did not exist in India in 1947. It was built up from the 1950s onwards, after Independence.
• (d)
  Electronics and Electricals — Neither half works. Electronics had no industrial base at Independence, and large-scale electrical equipment manufacture was created afterwards, so this pair sits entirely in the post-1947 period.

On the eve of Independence India was an agrarian economy with a small and lopsided industrial sector.

What existed was concentrated in consumer goods rather than capital goods: cotton textiles, largely Indian-owned in Bombay and Ahmedabad, and jute, largely foreign-owned in Bengal. Iron and steel was the one heavy industry of any weight.

The gap the planners named was capital goods — the machines that make machines — which is why the Second Five Year Plan put its investment into heavy industry rather than into more textile mills.

Key facts

• The Tata Iron and Steel Company was incorporated in 1907 and produced steel at Jamshedpur from 1912.
• The first successful cotton textile mill in India was set up in Bombay in 1854.
• At Independence the jute industry was concentrated in Bengal and was largely foreign-owned.
• The Second Five Year Plan shifted investment towards heavy and capital-goods industry.

Common traps

• Choosing electronics because it sounds like a natural partner for steel, when it had no base in 1947.
• Picking cement and sugar because both are old industries, when the stem asks which were established at scale.

No directly related past PYQ was found.