Mysore's Pre-Independence Development Push Gets a Fresh Look in Chandan Gowda's Book

Decades before independent India drew up its Five-Year Plans, the princely state of Mysore was already running its own modernisation drive. A book by Chandan Gowda, reviewed by Deccan Herald, revisits that story and argues that Mysore's development was shaped not only by engineers and administrators but also by religion, custom, moral values and local ambition. Gowda calls this the cultural logic of development.

The track record he examines is striking. Mysore pioneered hydroelectric power generation, and Bangalore became the first city in Asia to be electrified, in 1906. The state backed the founding of the Indian Institute of Science in 1909, and it hosted a radio broadcasting station and birth-control clinics ahead of anywhere else in colonial India. In 1881 it also set up the first representative assembly among Indian states, an experiment in self-government that Mahatma Gandhi mentioned in an 1894 speech in South Africa.

For a market-minded reader, the industrial chapters are the most instructive. The Bhadravati Iron Works began operations in 1923 despite doubts about its viability. Within four years, Mysoreans had replaced the American labour on site, and the plant posted its first profit in 1939. Gowda stresses that profit was never the only goal: the venture stood for Swadeshi, self-reliance and local jobs. Gandhi, visiting in 1927, said it showed that India had practical genius as well as intellect.

Mysore's ambitions went further. In the 1930s, an attempt to build India's first automobile manufacturing plant in the state was blocked by British authorities. A few years later, Hindustan Aircraft Limited emerged from an Indo-British partnership, seeding what would become India's aerospace industry. The state's unusual position, neither fully colonised nor fully sovereign, gave its Maharaja, Dewan, council members and senior civil servants room to steer, though not unlimited room.

The book's sharper lesson comes from agriculture, which stayed the backbone of the economy even as rulers pushed diversification. Gowda finds that schemes such as the Village Improvement Scheme and the Block System of Irrigation often faltered when they ignored the social logic of village life and established farming practices. The Krishnaraja Sagar dam, completed in 1931, expanded irrigation and power and became a symbol of progress. Yet the troubled Irwin Canal project, drawn from farmer-leader H K Veeranna Gowda's autobiography, shows farmers pushing back against parts of the plan.

Why it matters now: India's current debates on infrastructure, manufacturing self-reliance and farm reform echo the same tension. Capital and technology can open the path, but projects land best when they fit the communities they are meant to serve. Mysore's experience offers both an optimistic precedent and a practical caution. Read the original review at Deccan Herald.

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