UPSC Mains 2015 GS Paper 1 Q6: model answer

In the 1840s, Friedrich Engels walked through Manchester and recorded families living in cellars beside open sewers, in the world's first industrial city. The Industrial Revolution had begun in England in the late 18th century.

Why England first

• Natural resources: coal and iron close together.
• Capital from trade and colonies; banking and joint-stock companies.
• The agricultural revolution and enclosures, freeing labour and raising food output.
• Inventions: the spinning jenny, water frame and Watt's improved steam engine.
• Political stability, a navy that protected trade, and large colonial markets.

Quality of life during industrialisation

• Crowded, unsanitary towns such as Manchester; cholera outbreaks.
• Long working hours, child labour and low wages in factories and mines.
• Over time, the Factory Acts (from 1833), trade unions and public health laws (1848) improved conditions.

Comparison with India today

• Similarities: urban slums, informal and unsafe work, pollution, migrant labour.
• Differences: India has constitutional rights, labour codes, a ban on child labour in hazardous work, universal franchise and welfare schemes such as MGNREGA and the PDS.
• India industrialises in a service-led, technology-driven world, unlike England's factory age.
• Edwin Chadwick's report (1842) linked poor sanitation to disease, leading to public health reform.

Final word

England's experience shows the costs of unregulated growth. India can learn from it by combining industrial growth with labour protection and planned urbanisation.