Dark, Satanic Machines of Gujarat by Louis Proyect

Kaveh Yazdani is the author of the book  India, Modernity and the Great Divergence that looks closely at the lives of both rich and poor in 18^th century India, including Gujarat. Quoting Yazdani, Proyect writes, "In Surat [where Jain’s grandfather owned a mill], the wage of a spinner amounted to about Rs 8.5 for spinning a man of yarn, which took a woman working full-time approximately 80 days. This was a sum of about Rs 3.18 a month. According to Subramanian, the ‘Muslim weavers lived in poverty and were deep in debt to the Bania contractors and moneylenders.’ This has been corroborated by 17th century contemporaries like Mandelslo, Pelsaert and Fryer who reported that artisans were poor and possessed negligible spending capacities."
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