'Transport Business, Agrarian Structure and Government Intervention: Meerut district and division during the Great Depression (c. 1930-40)'

<strong>Centre for Historical Studies School of Social Sciences, JNU</strong> a Lecture <strong>'Transport Business, Agrarian Structure and Government Intervention: Meerut district and division during the Great Depression (c. 1930-40)'</strong> <strong>Dr. Stefan Tetzlaff</strong> South Asia Studies Centre (CEIAS, EHESS-CNRS) Paris, France <strong>13th April 2016</strong> <strong>Abstract: </strong>Building on historical and ethnographic research conducted in Meerut in spring 2014, the talk analyses the political, economic and social environments of the region's changing transport sector during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It highlights in particular the interests of the district administration in changing the transport sector as well as the trajectory of new bus transport services in this region. Moreover, the talk looks at the social backgrounds of several transport entrepreneurs (including Vaish banias, Muslim zamindars, Punjabi Hindu merchants and Brahmin professionals) and at attempts by the state to regulate the growth of transport enterprise. Stefan Tetzlaff is a postdoctoral fellow based at the South Asia Studies Centre (CEIAS, EHESS-CNRS) in Paris, France. His current research project on industrial policy and technology cooperation in Indian automotive engineering since the 1940s reflects his larger research interests in the social history of capitalism and business, technology and labour. Before this, Stefan studied South Asian history, political science and comparative literature in Berlin, spent a year at CHS and completed a doctorate in medieval and modern history in Göttingen. His dissertation analysed the interdependence between automobile traffic and social change in rural and small town India during the interwar period.