This book examines economic reform in the Punjab in the period 1900–47 in an attempt to historicize theories of institutional change and community development. Existing scholarship on colonial Punjab is preoccupied with either the rise of nationalist politics and the political transition to independence from the British, or the role of the military. The economic history of the region is meanwhile focused on large-scale changes such as the establishment of the canal colonies.

This book advances the economic history of the region by conducting an analysis of microeconomic reform in the province, thus providing an alternative way of studying the colonial impact on the Punjab. A close examination of programmes of rural reconstruction in colonial Punjab reveals stark parallels with more contemporary prescriptions of development economics. At the same time, a study of the trajectory of legislative change sheds light on the institutional legacies of colonial rule. The book situates the legal changes and microeconomic reforms in the political context to reveal the assumptions, ideological commitments, and underlying motives of the official and political actors involved. A study of the private papers and publications of the relevant officials, including Malcolm Darling and Frank Brayne, personalizes this account and humanizes a discourse on institutions, which otherwise might remain vague. The book also engages deeply with the theoretical scholarship on development and rural uplift that emerges in this period and develops an intellectual genealogy that links colonialism to development studies. It questions the ahistorical nature of development studies and the continued valorization of the ‘community’ despite a lack of supportive evidence. The book argues that one reason for the perpetuity and continued popularity of ideas of community development and institutional malaise is that both absolve the status quo from blame.