Abstract
This study identifies a unique insight into the entrepreneurial evolution of the city of Sialkot (Pakistan). The city affords an exceptional case study to examine the varying patterns of the development of industrial clusters, comprising of the stock of skills inherited by the local artisan communities (mistri), and the severe pressures imposed upon by the 1947 dislocations concerning the loss of commercial and capitalist Hindu and Sikh populations. How did the ‘mistri’ classes of Sialkot fill various niches left by the departure of non-Muslim traders? This study explains the demographic change in the aftermath of Partition that significantly impacted the city’s economy and brought new niches for economically-backward groups in different sectors of the economy, which is not fully recognized in the existing scholarship on the entrepreneurial history. It not only expounds the processes in which small and medium enterprises could develop and relate to the formal sector but also facilitate upward mobility of the subaltern groups. The emphasis is on the transition of entrepreneurial history of the ‘mistri’- the pioneers of the surgical instruments and sports goods industry of Sialkot- and their upward socio-economic mobility in the aftermath of the Partition.
Ilyas Chattha. (2021) From Mistri to Tycoons: Historical Advancement of Surgical Instruments and Sports Goods in Pakistan, Journal of the Punjab University Historical Society, Volume 34, Issue 1.
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