 By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas like education, social reform, and culture.Historians consider India's modern age to have begun sometime between 1848 and 1885.The appointment in 1848 of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state.