Decline of handicrafts and cottage industries

Until the advent of the disrupting forces of technology, the village was the basic economic and cultural unit. Now its self-sufficiency has disappeared and it is dependent on the city, the nation and the outside world. Village industries, such as spinning and weaving, pottery, brassware, oil pressing , vegetable dyes, hand paper making and lacquer work have gone into abeyance as machine-made goods, such as aluminium ware, kerosene, textiles and synthetic dyes, take their place. A superfluidity of cheap manufactures has displaced the craftsman, and his hereditary skills are disappearing. The ecological balance has been disrupted and the sense of social solidarity, of esprit de corps, generated by the rapport between the farmer and his land, the craftsman and his craft, are disappearing too, leaving a mobile, restless and shiftless population. The family structure of the village has been transformed into a mob-like adjunct of the factory.

Non-productive tribal and village economic activity has not declined enough in the face of the need for developing countries to enter and compete in the industrialized world. Clinging to traditional ways is an admission of defeat, a denial that the country is able to improve the living standards, literacy, health and security of its people.