Cottage industries

Recent years have seen a major resurgence of small business throughout the developed world. The countries

like divided Russia and Eastern Europe are prizing such skills very high.

The first piece of writing about the small business discovered was of about more than 4000 years ago. This

writing is about loaning from a Bank for a small business with terms and conditions. Since then, the small

business people have been the backbone of most economies providing products and services to the

consumers.

Small business flourished in almost all ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Arabs, Babylonians, Jews, Greeks

and Romans contained a substantial population of small business. Their products and services, however,

were often of poor qualities. Consumers were cheated and degraded. The result was that small business

became object of contempt. To protect the customers from such unscrupulous traders, HAMMURABI, the

king of Babylon introduced the first business laws.

Despite many successes the Greek and Roman historians virtually ignored the role of small business and

talked more about the other things. Yet it was largely through small business that the traders by doing

business in other countries spread law, religions, and philosophy and basic sciences.

In the centuries that followed the small business, the religions held small business people in low esteem.

Although now held in the higher esteem than ever before, small business remains overshadowed by

professions such as medicine and law.

When Adam Smith published "Wealth of Nations" in 1776, he was describing an economy in which local

small business was virtually being the only economic entities. Indeed, the era of local economy was the

heyday of small business.

In the undivided subcontinent if we look at beginnings of the known history of small business, the cottage

industries thrived through the period when society was organized more or less into self sufficient and self-

contained units. The sub-

Continent industry, whether small or large scale, suffered a serious set back Page during British rule. Indian

industries including small and cottage did not receive any patronage during the period before Second World

War. It was, however, since independence that a positive policy for the industrial development could be

formulated and implemented.

The best model of small industries in our region is considered to be of India. This model is defined the

SMES development through the development of infrastructure. In the year 1938 national planning
committee "NPC" was set up and its general secretary Mr. K.T. Shah made the definitions of cottage,


village and small-scale industries. The various definitions since then are in practice having different variables


as manpower, capital, assets value etc. The definitions are as under


DEFINITION

Cottage Industry:


The cottage industry or small scale industry may be defined to be an enterprise or series of operations


carried out only by a workman skilled in the craft on his own responsibility, the finished products of which


he markets himself. He works in his own home with his own tools and materials and provides his own


labor. These workers are mostly hand labors and having personal skills with little or no aid from modern


technology and machinery they work in accordance with the traditional technique.


In the year 1940 another Indian definition came which had a more pragmatic approach where it was


divided small industry into following categories