While there are books on Maruti-Suzuki and ITC, we do need good business histories on Colgate, Asian Paints, Pidilite, Exide and Laxmi Machine Works which have all held market dominance for so long. A brief thread on Indian corporate biographies.
My favorite is Muthiah's 'The Spencer Legend'; Spencer was the pioneer with a pan-Indian retailing in early 20th c, aggressive M&A and lots of interesting strategies. On Indian retailing history, see our work at: emerald.com/insight/conten…
There's a lot on the TATAs; then there's Godrej, Bank of Baroda, and so on. More than 50 such corporate biographies are listed in this c.2004 Indian business history bibliography by N. Benjamin and P. N. Rath on pages 20-24. PDF available on this link: dspace.gipe.ac.in/xmlui/handle/1…
But to the best of my knowledge, there is NOT a SINGLE Indian corporate biography that has NOT been commissioned by the company. Something like Mira Wilkins and Frank Hill's "Ford on Six Continents" (Cambridge University Press).That requires corporate archives with public access!
The closest that's probably come to it is Nomura's "The House of Tata Meets the Second Industrial Revolution:
An Institutional Analysis of Tata Iron and Steel Co. in Colonial India" using material from the TATA Archives. springer.com/gp/book/978981…
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IIMs and historically-minded research? Two new PhD theses coming from @IIMAhmedabad and @iimb_official study phenomena over nearly a century, especially on entrepreneurship.
Was lucky to be on both their dissertation committees. Brief thread on what we learn from them (1/7)
Manjunath A N (IRS officer) at @iimb_official looked at the entrepreneurial history of old Mysore region (1881-1956) based on a wide range of sources. This is just one page of many, on the type of sources used.
Among many findings which I will not disclose here, he shows how Bangalore became known as a science city by the 1950s itself and how critical state entrepreneurship was, and the links with private enterprise and Europeans . This is 1 page of many on state-owned firms.
📢The 2023 Caste Census of Bihar allows us to see century-long demographic change in castes for a sizeable Indian region for the first time.
This thread compares the Bihar Census of 1931 with 2023 and reveals: Broad stability+ The significance of migration selectivity (1/12)
The last publicly available Caste Census was carried out in 1931 when Bihar was part of Bihar & Orissa. 10 districts of Bihar 1931 Census correspond to the modern state of Bihar (99% match). Marked in Census Admin Atlas 1931 map from 1-6 & 8-11 and listed in Census caste tables.
Population changes because of migration and natural growth (fertility minus mortality). Bihar has had persistent high net outmigration (that reduces population growth) and relatively higher natural growth (late fertility transition) (which increases population growth).
Here's the list of the ten largest companies of British India in 1921 by paid-up capital.
Today's thread is on the little known firm ranked at No. 1: Burma Corporation, a mining firm founded by an engineer who went on to become the President of the USA! (1/n)
Burma Corporation is remarkably less researched so much of what we know is because of recent research by @ProfBaillargeon via his doctoral thesis and this paper in @EntandSoc.
Mining was prevalent in the region around the Bawdwin Mines in northern Burma for a long time but took a new turn with the discovery of silver, lead and zinc deposits at Bawdwin in 1913. 39-year old Herbert Hoover, engineer & mining expert, helped set up Burma Co. (Pic: ES paper)
Today was the first time in my life that I held a newspaper describing an Olympic Indian Hockey medal victory!
So I went back in time to see how it must have felt 11 previous times. 1928. Amsterdam. Gold Medal. No goals conceded by India in tournament.
Times of India. June 23.
1932. Los Angeles. Gold Medal. Only three teams that year. India beat Japan 11-1 and USA 24-1. 'Dhyanchand' and 'Rupsingh' starred in victories.
TOI. 1932. Aug 6 and 13. But not featured on the newspaper's front page!
1936. Berlin. Gold. Beat Germany 8-1 in the final. Dhyan Chand the star of the match.
TOI. 1936. Aug 17. Still not on the front page of the newspaper!
Our inter-disciplinary research team estimates excess mortality in India from June 2020 to June 2021 at 2.7-3.4 million (most of it in the 2nd wave), using 3 different databases, including the only survey that asked a question on Covid deaths.
Pre-Print: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Great to learn from co-author Prof. Prabhat Jha and his team, who has probably spent more time over the past two decades working on Indian mortality than anyone else (See their "Million Death Study"). His twitter handle is literally @countthedead.
How bad was the recent Covid wave shock on rural India?
Very Bad.
Important clues emerge from recently released death data through facilities-based Health Management Information system (HMIS).
First: States that took the hit early on.
Thread (1/n)
HMIS is different from CRS in that it is more rural, has less coverage and is facilities-based. Hence, noisier time series. Focussing on states with reasonably stable pre-pandemic baselines in this thread.
Excess mortality for April-May period, relative to average of 2018-19 baseline is HIGH. You can take trend growth into account, use different baselines and its still well past 100% for these states.