Modernization of leather industry and chequered history of technical education in colonial Kanpur

Modernization of industry in the western world was determined by application as well as the training of man for applying science in industry. The leather industry which was manufacturing at the cottage level did not resist this modernization. The leather industry in India employed the most depressed class of the Indian society. On the one hand, modernization of leather industry was determined by application of science, while on the other by the training of the workforce. The latter invoked political and social factors like state policy for technical education, receiving of technical education by artisan class and employment opportunity for the skilled workforce. By the late nineteenth century, Kanpur emerged as the prominent centre of modern leather industry in colonial India due to military needs of the British Indian army. The reasons for slow growth of science and technology in colonial India have been extensively examined by scholars but the configuration of industry at the local level, the role of social composition of the workforce in the modernization and the inception of technical education have been less examined The present paper seeks to address the questions as to the factors which led to the emergence of modern leather industry in Kanpur; the nature of its organization and the relationship between leather industry and institutionalization of technical education for this industry.