The
poverty of the Indian population at the present day
is unparalleled in any civilised country; the famines
which have desolated India within the last quarter of
the nineteenth century are unexampled in their ex
tent and intensity in the history of ancient or modern
times. By a moderate calculation, the famines of
1877 and 1878, of 1889 and 1892, of 1897 and 1900,
have carried off fifteen millions of people. The population of a faired-sized European country has been
swept away from India within twenty-five years. A
population equal to half of that of England has
perished in India within a period which men and
women, still in middle age, can remember.
What are the causes of this intense poverty and
these repeated famines in India? Superficial explanations have been offered one after another, and
have been rejected on close examination. It was
said that the population increased rapidly in India,
and that such increase must necessarily lead to
famines ; it is found on inquiry that the population
has never increased in India at the rate of England,
and that during the last ten years it has altogether
ceased to increase. It was said that the Indian cultivators were careless and improvident, and that those
who did not know how to save when there was plenty,
must perish when there was want; but it is known
to men who have lived all their lives among these
cultivators, that there is not a more abstemious, a
more thrifty, a more frugal race of peasantry on earth.
It was said that the Indian money-lender was the
bane of India, and by his fraud and extortion kept
the tillers of the soil in a chronic state of indebtedness; but the inquiries of the latest Famine Com
mission have revealed that the cultivators of India
are forced under the thraldom of money-lenders by
the rigidity of the Government revenue demand.
was said that in a country where the people depended almost entirely on their crops, they must starve when the crops failed in years of drought; but the crops in India, as a whole, have never failed, there has never been a single year when the food supply of the country was insufficient for the people, and there must be something wrong, when failure in a single province brings on a famine, and the people are unable to buy their supplies from neighbouring provinces rich in harvests. Deep down under all these superficial explanations we must seek for the true causes of Indian poverty and Indian famines. The economic laws which operate in India are the same as in other countries of the world ; the causes which lead to wealth among other nations lead to prosperity in India ; the causes which impoverish other nations impoverish the people of India. Therefore, the line of inquiry which the economist will pursue in respect of India is the same which he adopts in inquiring into the wealth or poverty of other nations. Does agriculture flourish ? Are industries and manufactures in a prosperous condition ? Are the finances properly administered, so as to bring back to the people an adequate return for the taxes paid by them ? Are the sources of national wealth widened by a Government anxious for the material welfare of the people? These are questions which the average Englishman asks himself when inquiring into the economic condition of any country in the world ; these are questions which he will ask himself in order to ascertain the truth about India. It is, unfortunately, a fact which no well-informed Indian official will ignore, that, in many ways, the sources of national wealth in India have been narrowed under British rule. India in the eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as a great agricultural country, and the products of the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and of Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East Indian Company and the British Parliament, following the selfish commercial policy of a hundred years ago, discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England. Their fixed policy, pursued during the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain, and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the looms and many factories of Great Britain. This policy was pursued with unwavering resolution and with fatal success; orders were sent out, to force Indian artisans to work in the Company's factories ; commercial residents were legally vested with extensive powers over villages and communities of Indian weavers ; prohibitive tariffs ex cluded Indian silk and cotton goods from England; English goods were admitted into India free of duty or on payment of a nominal duty. The British manufacturer, in the words of the historian, H. H. Wilson, " employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms ; " millions of Indian artisans lost their earnings ; the population of India lost one great source of their wealth. It is a painful episode in the history of British rule in India ; but it is a story which has to be told to explain the economic condition of the Indian people, and their present helpless dependence on agri culture. The invention of the power-loom in Europe completed the decline of the Indian industries; and when in recent years the power-loom was set up in India, England once more acted towards India with unfair jealousy. An excise duty has been imposed on
was said that in a country where the people depended almost entirely on their crops, they must starve when the crops failed in years of drought; but the crops in India, as a whole, have never failed, there has never been a single year when the food supply of the country was insufficient for the people, and there must be something wrong, when failure in a single province brings on a famine, and the people are unable to buy their supplies from neighbouring provinces rich in harvests. Deep down under all these superficial explanations we must seek for the true causes of Indian poverty and Indian famines. The economic laws which operate in India are the same as in other countries of the world ; the causes which lead to wealth among other nations lead to prosperity in India ; the causes which impoverish other nations impoverish the people of India. Therefore, the line of inquiry which the economist will pursue in respect of India is the same which he adopts in inquiring into the wealth or poverty of other nations. Does agriculture flourish ? Are industries and manufactures in a prosperous condition ? Are the finances properly administered, so as to bring back to the people an adequate return for the taxes paid by them ? Are the sources of national wealth widened by a Government anxious for the material welfare of the people? These are questions which the average Englishman asks himself when inquiring into the economic condition of any country in the world ; these are questions which he will ask himself in order to ascertain the truth about India. It is, unfortunately, a fact which no well-informed Indian official will ignore, that, in many ways, the sources of national wealth in India have been narrowed under British rule. India in the eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as a great agricultural country, and the products of the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and of Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East Indian Company and the British Parliament, following the selfish commercial policy of a hundred years ago, discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England. Their fixed policy, pursued during the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain, and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the looms and many factories of Great Britain. This policy was pursued with unwavering resolution and with fatal success; orders were sent out, to force Indian artisans to work in the Company's factories ; commercial residents were legally vested with extensive powers over villages and communities of Indian weavers ; prohibitive tariffs ex cluded Indian silk and cotton goods from England; English goods were admitted into India free of duty or on payment of a nominal duty. The British manufacturer, in the words of the historian, H. H. Wilson, " employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms ; " millions of Indian artisans lost their earnings ; the population of India lost one great source of their wealth. It is a painful episode in the history of British rule in India ; but it is a story which has to be told to explain the economic condition of the Indian people, and their present helpless dependence on agri culture. The invention of the power-loom in Europe completed the decline of the Indian industries; and when in recent years the power-loom was set up in India, England once more acted towards India with unfair jealousy. An excise duty has been imposed on
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