Question

Discuss the economic impact of British Rule in India.

Answer 1

Economic Impact of British Rule in India
Agrarian Conditions
1. Governor General Cornwallis, himself a big landlord in England, wanted to create landlords in India on the English model.
2. There were already revenue farmers under the Mughals. Cornwallis came to a settlement with them, treating them as landlords.
3. The outcome was that for the first time in India there was a class of zamindars or landlords with a right to own, bequeath and inherit land.
4. The cultivators, on the other hand, were reduced to the position of mere tenants.
Land Revenue and the Pauperisation of Peasantry
1. The land tax which was the main source of revenue to the British was collected forcibly.
2. Even in times of famines no remission was given to the peasants. They had to even mortgage or sell their property including their land to pay the landlord’s rent and the land tax.
3. As no credit facilities were provided by the state, they had to depend on moneylenders to borrow money. A system of money lending was followed by professional money-lenders who belonged to various communities such as mahajans, sahukars, and bohras. In the Tamil speaking areas there were Nattukottai Chettiyars.
4. The colonial state pursued a policy of ‘commercialization of agriculture’. Commercial crops like cotton, jute, groundnuts, oilseeds, sugarcane, tobacco, etc., depending on the market demands fetched better prices than food grains. So in his bid to clear his debt and to pay up the revenue dues to the state, instead of producing for home consumption, the peasant began to raise crops for the market. He had to depend on the price trend in international markets for selling his agricultural goods.
5. Ignorant of market forces the peasants often came to distress, when the demand in the local market, which was now linked to the world market, crashed.
Irrigation
1. The British neglected irrigation in the first half of nineteenth century. Major irrigation canals were built only after millions of people died in a series of major famines that broke out periodically from the middle of 19th century.
2.the British collected an extra cess adding to the misery of the peasants who were already groaning under the oppressive land revenue system.
Famines
1. The policy of free trade and the forcible collection of land revenue resulted in the outbreak of famines.
2. The Odisha famine of 1866-67, was a severe and terrible event in the history of that region in which about a third of the population died. The famine of 1876-78, also known as the Great Famine of 1876-78 (called Thathu Varusha Panjam in Tamil), caused a large migration of agricultural labourers and artisans from southern India to British colonies, where they worked as indentured labourers on plantations. The death toll-about 10.3 million-was huge.
3. These famines were typically followed by various infectious diseases such as bubonic plague (spread by dead rats) and influenza, which attacked and killed a population already weakened by starvation.
Indentured Labour
1. The Indentured Labour System was a form of debt bondage, by which 3.5 million Indians were transported to various British colonies to provide labour for the plantations (mainly sugar).
2. It started from 1843, the year of abolition of slavery in India and continued until 1920. This resulted in the development of a large Indian diaspora, which spread from the Indian Ocean (Reunion and Mauritius) to Pacific Ocean (Fiji), as well as contributing to the growth of Indo-Caribbean and Indo African population.