Retracing Buchanan’s Journey

Through Madras, Mysore, Canara and Malabar
April 16, 2022
bangaloreinternationalcentre....
A talk by Sashi Sivramkrishna. There is no better way to describe Buchanan’s Journey in 1800 than reproducing the title of his book - A Journey from Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, And Malabar, for the Express Purpose of Investigating the State of Agriculture, Arts, and Commerce; the Religion, Manners, and Customs; the History Natural and Civil, and Antiquities.

[@udaypl]

Excellent talk, enjoyed every second of it.
Especially attractive was your inclusion of economics, metallurgy etc in the discussion.

[@venkataraghotham7586]

An excellent presentation. I enjoyed the way in which the travels of Buchanan are interwoven with larger context of East India Company, agriculture, landscape and use of metals. The reference to the Great Divergence was quite relevant. Wish you make more such investigations.

[@kulbhushanvaishnavi4992]

A comment/suggestion for the lecturer, Mr Shashi:
Re backward bending demand curve.
This was practically true even as late as late 1950s. HMT introduced a participative production incentive plan for their production labour. Instead of production going up, it slumped. I have some personal knowledge of this in quite some detail but I won’t go into all that here. HMT records would be available for that, I’m sure. More importantly, HMT management were then forced to introduce consumer goods like fans, sewing machines etc on monthly instalment-plan in their in-factory workers co-op outlet to jack up the workers’ consumption and, therefore, higher monthly wage-needs which jacked up the production beyond the minimum participation-points.
Regards

[@sashisivramkrishna593]

Thank you, Mr. Vaishnavi. Very interesting comment.