Faculty Seminar | ‘Reconceptualising the role of law as an instrument of development: An analysis of the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act 1951’
July 5, 2023
The first faculty seminar for this new academic year will be held on 5 July 2023.
Speaker:
Dr. Rashmi Venkatesan will be discussing the paper titled ‘Reconceptualising the role of law as an instrument of development: An analysis of the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act 1951’.
Abstract:
“One of the earliest and most important legislations enacted in independent India was the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act 1951 (hereinafter ‘IDRA’ or the ‘Act’). Its purpose was to bring the “development and regulation of a number of important industries, the activities of which affect the country as a whole [emphasis mine]” under the control of the Central Government. It was considered an important legal tool to facilitate industrialisation, a key of India’s post-colonial ‘development’ imagination. The article analyses the IDRA, the Act that set up the infamous ‘license-permit-quote raj’, to analyse the role of law in ‘development’ in post-colonial India.
Unlike L&D theories that would conceptualise the IDRA as an instrument of state designed to fulfill its developmental goals, I argue law, like the IDRA, played a constitutive role – it constituted the very objects of ‘development’ and in so constituting, solidified a particular meaning and vision of ‘development’. Using the critical legal methods and idea of jurisdiction, I argue that the IDRA, by speaking of and categorising certain industries as industries “the activities of which affect the country as a whole”, firstly, constituted the very object that it sought to govern i.e., ‘key industries’. It did so by not only naming certain industries as such but also distinguishing and extracting them from other similarly contested and constructed categories – i.e., ‘cottage’ or ‘local’ industries on the one hand, and ‘agriculture’ on the other. Secondly, by constituting which industries were ‘key industries’ critical for ‘national’ development, the IDRA did not simply implement ‘development’ but rather froze the meaning of and solidified a particular idea of ‘industrialisation’ and ‘development’ among other competing ones. In doing so, the IDRA justified both state control and protection of certain industries; excluded ‘local’people from control of ‘national’ industries and resources; and legitimised state violence in pursuit of ‘development’ and ‘industrialisation’. The article provokes a reconceptualisation of ‘development’ and ‘industrialisation’ not only as economic ideas that were brought to life through law but, at least partly, as legal processes.”