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British Motivations Behind Postal Policy and Allocation in Colonial India

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Where the Runners Went: British Motivations Behind Postal Policy and Allocation in Colonial India A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics by Sheetal Bharat June 2012 Dissertation Committee: Prof. Susan Carter, Chairperson Prof. Gary Dymski Prof. Anil Deolalikar Prof. Richard Sutch The Dissertation of Sheetal Bharat is approved: ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several people I want to thank for helping me through the five years of my doctoral studies. I am deeply grateful to Professor Susan Carter and Professor Richard Sutch for taking me with them to conferences in the first year as soon as I expressed an interest in economic history and for drawing out my fledgling interest in the subject through their fascinating classes in the second year. Professor Carter kept me motivated and on track – the help she extended me was more than what I expected and what I deserve. Professor Gary Dymski, in the short while that we interacted, was immensely encouraging. Our discussions on Indian economic history and economics in general were fascinating and brought up many new ideas. Professor Anil Deolalikar gave me a lot of time in spite of his busy schedule and supported me untiringly. My research started with generous data collection grants from the All- University of California Group for Economic History. The opportunity to present at four of their conferences and get honest feedback from stalwarts in the field of economic history did a lot to improve my research and my confidence. Other grants from the UCR Economics Department, Graduate Division and Graduate Students Association helped with further data collection and conference related travels. Friends in the UCR Economics Department have been constant companions through the difficult first year of the PhD and after. Geoff, Vilma, Maithili and Professor Todd Sorensen often answered my little questions about Stata. Sarah, iii Sharmaji, Monica, Farhan, Uday, Aparajita, Indrani, Venoo and Gerald have been supportive by listening to my early research ideas and giving feedback. Nitya Nanda, always my best interest in mind, introduced me to Professor Rakesh Batabyal from the Jawaharlal Nehru University with the intention of expanding my view of Indian economic history. Professor Batabyal was generous with his time during my visit to Delhi. My introductory chapter greatly benefitted from our lengthy discussion of history and politics, and from his reading recommendations – they helped me place my research in the larger Indian economic history literature. Chinmany Tumbe put me in touch with some important aspects of the migration literature. During my data collection efforts, the staff in the British Library’s Asian and African Studies Reading Room helped me make the best use of my limited time and resources. Later, my cousin Dharini very kindly spent a whole day at the Library copying more material for me. The librarians and other staff at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, the National Library, Kolkata and the National Archives, New Delhi assisted with getting membership and accessing material quickly. Sujit Choudhury, Nilshikha Das and Mintu Nath, from PAN Networks Pvt. Ltd. Kolkata, have been extraordinarily patient with my several requests for maps and frequent changes in them. Professor Tahir Andrabi got vast amounts of data digitised for me, saving me months of work. Siddharth Pai introduced me to pivot tables – a tool that greatly streamlined my data cleaning process. Bill Strossman of iv the UCR Computing and Communications Department gave me access to the campus grid. My husband, Narayan helped me with code. My family was deeply supportive at every stage, even at times when I was doubtful. Ritu guided me with better writing style and better organisation of material in my dissertation. I have benefitted from the good wishes and prayers of my parents, grandmother, parents-in-law and grand parents-in-law. Narayan helped me manage my deadlines with ease during the last few months by entirely taking over household chores. He helped me arrive at important decisions this past year and has been supportive in every way. I, like many graduate students, have been through phases of doubt. The help I have received from all these people and others has only strengthened me, but any inadequacies or errors in my work are my responsibility alone. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Where the Runners Went: British Motivations Behind Postal Policy and Allocation in Colonial India by Sheetal Bharat Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate program in Economics University of California, Riverside, June 2012 Prof. Susan Carter, Chairperson British presence has had a profound influence on economic development in British and independent India, and the debate on the nature of this influence has been raging for decades. At one end is the imperialist view that India benefitted from British rule and at the other is the nationalist view that India is still struggling from the burden of misrule. This debate has been enriched by in-depth research on the railways, among other topics; yet the closely related postal network has received no attention. Since part of the disagreement in this debate stems from different perceptions of intention, I approach the question by asking what effects the British intended the post to have. I use economic theory to propose, a priori, three motives for a state establishing postal communication – political, commercial and welfare, and some postal characteristics that serve as evidence for each. The railway vi literature too attributes the construction of railway lines to these three motives. Using newly collected and digitised data on post office locations and policy, I show that the British did indeed have these three motives for establishing and expanding postal communication in India. Presentation of evidence is divided in two – Poona district in Bombay province, and the whole Indian subcontinent. I compare the allocation of post offices in Poona in 1881 with a hypothetical benevolent social planner’s network, which ensures that post offices are as near as possible to as many people as possible. Differences that emerge are easily explained by the three motives. A probit model shows what village characteristics are strongest predictors of the presence of post offices. A detailed qualitative discussion of the evidence for the subcontinent permits an evaluation of the relative importance of the three motives. Since the British engaged in trade with India and also governed India, the political and commercial motives were important and linked. The welfare role of the post, though genuine, came later as a by-product of the network already established for political and commercial reasons. The service-for-the-people role of the post was secondary to its tool-for-governance role, both temporally, and in terms of importance. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 2. ECONOMICS OF THE POSTAL SYSTEM ....................................................................... 9 3. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ...................................................................................... 39 4. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................ 48 5. DATA......................................................................................................................... 53 6. IN POONA DISTRICT OF BOMBAY PROVINCE ........................................................... 56 Model to determine an “ideal” postal network .............................................. 57 Assumptions ......................................................................................... 58 Data ...................................................................................................... 63 The social planner’s model ................................................................... 64 Problem of incomplete data................................................................. 66 Results and comparison ....................................................................... 71 A probit approach ................................................................................ 73 Sub-divisional analysis ......................................................................... 79 Growth of Poona’s Postal Network ................................................................. 83 Growth from 1881 to 1890 .................................................................. 83 Growth from 1890 to 1899 .................................................................. 85 Growth from 1899 to 1911 .................................................................. 86 viii The broad pattern ................................................................................ 87 7. IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT ............................................................................... 97 Political motive ................................................................................................ 97 Commercial motive .......................................................................................
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