Economic Condition of the People

PART FOUR

Even as we look on, India is becoming feebler and feebler. The very life-blood of the great multitude under our rule is slowly, yet ever faster, ebbing away. — H. M. HYNDMAN, In “Bankruptcy of India,” page 152.

CHAPTER IX

ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE

“THERE is one fact of all supreme importance — the extreme poverty of the Indian cultivator, and, indeed, of the whole Indian population. Poverty in England or America or Germany is a question of the distribution of wealth. In India it is a question of production.” A. Loveday, in “The History and Economies of Indian Famines,” p. 5. London (1914).

The Poverty of the Masses

The real answer to the question propounded in the concluding lines of the last chapter, is to be found in the economic conditions of the country and the general poverty of the masses. Here again, the official and non-official versions differ widely. Below is an official expression, culled from a memorandum presented to Parliament in 1909 under the title

SOME RESULTS OF THE INDIAN ADMINISTRATION DURING THE PAST FIFTY YEARS

“In any comparison between the condition of the people of India and those of Europe, it must be remembered that in India, every one marries and marries early; that the population tends to increase at a rate varying from ½ per cent. per annum on the upper Ganges plain, to 4 per cent. per annum in Burma; that there is no poor law or system of poor relief, but everywhere widespread and openhanded charity, so that the infirm, the old, the sick, the cripple, the priest besides many who prefer a mendicant’s life, are in ordinary years supported by the alms of their neighbours. Further, it must be remembered that in rural India, from the nature of the climate, and immemorial custom, the poorer classes have fewer garments, and can replenish them more cheaply, than is the case in Europe. Clothes, warmth, shelter, furniture, cost very little for the rural Indian family; the bulk of the population are satisfied with two meals a day, of millet cakes or porridge, some pulse or green vegetable, salt and oil. In coast districts of southern India, and in Moslem families, a little salt fish or meat is added to the daily (?) meal.”

“General:

“So far as ordinary tests can be applied, the average Indian landholder, trader, ryot and handicraftsman, is better off than he was fifty years ago. He consumes more salt, more tobacco and more imported luxuries and conveniences than he did a generation back. Where house to house inquiries have been made, it has been found that the average villager eats more food and has a better house than his father; that brass or copper vessels have taken the place of the coarse earthenware of earlier times; and that his family possess more clothes than formerly. There are exceptional districts, like North Behar, where the rural population is extraordinarily dense, or parts of the Deccan where the soil is extremely poor, and the rainfall precarious; in such tracts, the condition of the landless labourer is still deplorably bad. There are other exceptional tracts, such as lower Burma, Assam, Malabar, Canara, the Himalayan districts, and a great part of Eastern Bengal, where the population is sparse, or not too dense, the soil is rich, the rainfall always abundant, and good markets are at hand; in such tracts, wages are high, work and food are abundant, there is a comparatively high grade of living, and there is little or no real poverty. The greater part of India lies between these exceptional extremes, and on the whole, the standard of comfort in an average Indian village household is better than it was fifty years ago. It is quite certain that the population of India absorbs and hoards more of the precious metals than it did formerly, for during the past fifty years, India’s net absorption from outside, of gold and silver, has amounted to the equivalent of 6303 millions of rupees, or an increase of 126 millions a year, while during the 22 years ending with 1857, India’s net absorption of the precious metals averaged only thirty-two millions a year.

“Conditions of different classes; I. The Landholding Class. 2. The Trading Class. 3. The Professional Class. 4. The Tenant or Ryot Class. 5. The Labouring Class.” (We omit the paragraphs relating to the first three classes.)

“The tenant or ryot class in all provinces, enjoy some share, in some districts a considerable share, in the increased profits of agriculture. In Eastern and Central Bengal, the ryots are well off. In the Central Provinces, where tenant’s right is exceptionally strong, the ryots are mostly in good circumstance. But in Behar, in most of the Agra Province and in Oude, the tenant ryot is weak, or has been but recently placed on a firm footing; the population is dense, holdings are small, and many of the ryots are in poor circumstances. They and their families earn something in good years by labour outside their holdings, and when the season is favourable, they live fairly well. A ryot with a tenant right under the land, can generally get credit in a year of short harvest but in a famine year, many of the ryots in the last-named tracts must and do break down.

“The labouring classes, who have no beneficial interest in the land, are in India a smaller section of the people than in England. Still, out of the total Indian population of 294 millions, there are a vast number of labourers, and their condition is most important to the condition of the country . . . the wages . . . have greatly increased. . . . The landless labourer in the thickly populated rural tracts, remote from railways or new industries, lives poorly now, as in generations past, and their wages or earnings, are in some districts, still very small.”

The statements contained in the memorandum are very greatly exaggerated, one-sided and incomplete. The writer of the report speaks of the rise in wages, but he does not mention the rise in prices and gives no data on which to base the generalities indulged in by him. A rise in wages is valueless if the rise in prices be proportionately higher. Add to it the fact that the value of the Indian rupee has steadily gone down. It was 2s. in the fifties, about 1s. 10d. in the seventies, 1s. 4d. in the nineties, where it stands now. The statement that “the average villager eats more food” is absurdly false. The argument based on population will be noticed in the chapter on famines, and that on the absorption of precious metals at the end of this book. The picture drawn in this memorandum is wholly incompatible with the fact that the average income of an Indian is £2, or $10.00 a year. In the meantime, we will let eminent Englishmen speak on the poverty of the masses, and the reader may be left to draw his own conclusions. With reference to the statement of the strength of the labouring class the census report of 1911 fixes the number of farm servants and field labourers alone at forty-one millions.

Testimony of English Public Men

Sir William Hunter, one of the most candid writers and a distinguished historian of India, director-general of Indian statistics for many years, declared that 40,000,000 of the people of India were seldom or never able to satisfy their hunger.

Says Mr. J. S. Cotton in his book, “Colonies and Dependencies,” p. 68 (1883): “If the security of British rule has allowed the people to increase it does not follow that it has promoted the general prosperity. That could only be done in one of two ways — either by producing a distinct rise in the standard of living among the lowest classes or by diverting a considerable section of the people from the sole occupation of agriculture. . . . Neither of these things has been done. Competent authorities indeed are of opinion that the condition of the lowest classes has become worse under the British rule.”

Mr. A. O. Hume, Secretary to the Government of India in the Agricultural Department, wrote in 1880: “Except in very good seasons, multitudes for months every year cannot get sufficient food for themselves and family.”

Sir Auckland Colvin, once a Finance Minister in India, describes the tax-paying community as made up in the main of “men whose income at best is barely sufficient to afford them the sustenance necessary to support life, living as they do upon bare necessities.”

Sir Charles Elliott, once Chief Commissioner of Assam, wrote in 1888: “I do not hesitate to say that half the agricultural population do not know from one year’s end to another, what it is to have a full meal.”

The Indian Witness, a Christian paper, once remarked: “It is safe to assume that 100,000,000 of the population of India have an annual income of not more than $5.00 a head.”

An American missionary wrote from Southern India in 1902: “The most trying experience I ever had was a three weeks’ tour in September of last year (1901). My tent was surrounded day and night, and one sentence dinned perpetually into my ears: ‘We are dying for lack of food.’ People are living on one meal every two or three days. I once carefully examined the earnings of a congregation of three hundred, and found the average amounted to less than one farthing a head per day. They did not live, they eked out an existence. I have been in huts where the people were living on carrion. Yet in all these cases, there was no recognised famine! In Heaven’s name, if this is not famine, what is it? The extreme poverty of the poorer classes of India offers conditions altogether extraordinary. Life is the narrowest and hardest conceivable, with no prospect of any improvement. For a family of six persons, many an outfit, including house, utensils, furniture, clothing and all, is worth less than $10.00. The average income for such a family will not exceed fifty cents per head a month, and is frequently little over half that. It may therefore be surmised that not much of this income is spent upon cultivation of the mind, sanitation, or the appearance of the dwelling.”¹

Average Income of the People

According to official estimates, the maximum average annual income per head of the people of India is thirty rupees. Lord Cromer, then Finance Minister for India, made the first estimate in 1882, placing the average at twenty-seven rupees; Lord Curzon, the late Viceroy, estimated the income of the agricultural population, 85 per cent. of the whole, to be Rs. 30 per year. In his budget speech for 1901, Lord George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for India, said the average income was Rs. 30 (£2); Mr. William Digby, C. I. E., after a full and exhaustive study of the condition of the people, financially and industrially, furnishes overwhelming evidence, as yet unanswered to the contrary, to show that the average annual income of the people of India is not over Rs. 17½ (about six dollars). Considering the value of the rupee, which is equivalent to about thirty-three cents American money, we have the startling condition of millions of people subsisting on from $6.00 to $10.00 per year, or about two cents a day,—this by official estimate.

The Rev. Dr. Sunderland cites these facts and figures, in support of his observations on Indian famines:

“The truth is, the poverty of India is something we can have little conception of, unless we have actually seen it, as alas, I have. . . . Is it any wonder that the Indian peasant can lay up nothing for time of need? . . . The extreme destitution of the people is principally responsible for the devastations of Plague; the loss of life from this terrible scourge is startling. It reached 272,000 in 1901; 500,000 in 1902; 800,000 in 1903; and over 1,000,000 in 1904. It still continues unchecked. The vitality of the people has been reduced by long semi-starvation. So long as the present destitution of India continues, there is small ground for hope that the Plague can be overcome. . . . The real cause of famines in India is not lack of rain; it is not over-population; it is the extreme, the abject, the awful poverty of the people.”

The following observation was made in “Moral and Material Progress of India for 1874-75” (Parliamentary Blue Book):

“The Calcutta missionary conference dwelt on the miserable, abject condition of the Bengal ryots, and there is evidence that they suffer many things, and are often in want of absolute necessities. . . . In the Northwestern Provinces, the wages of agricultural labourers have hardly varied at all since the beginning of this century; and after the payment of the rent, the margin left for the cultivator’s subsistence is less than the value of the labour he has expended . . . many live on a coarse grain, which is most unwholesome, and produces loin palsy. . . . This extreme poverty among the agricultural population is one of the reasons which makes any improvement in farming and cultivation so difficult.”

Says Mr. H. M. Hyndman in “Bankruptcy of India,” page 74 (1886 A.D.).

“That the people of India are growing poorer and poorer, that taxation is not only actually, but relatively far heavier; that each successive scarcity widens the area of impoverishment; that famines are more frequent; that most of the trade is but an index to the poverty and crushing over-taxation of the people; that a highly-organised foreign rule constitutes by itself a most terrible drain upon the country.”

Said Sir William Hunter, former member of the Viceroy’s Council, in a speech in 1875:

“The Government assessment does not leave enough food to the cultivator to support himself and family throughout the year.”

The Pioneer, the semi-official paper of the British-Indian Government, wrote in an article in 1877:

“Worried by the revenue survey, for heavily enhanced public payments . . . the Deccan ryot accepted, for a third of a century the yoke of British mismanagement . . . Report upon report has been written upon him; shelf upon shelf in the public offices groaned under the story of his wrongs. If any one doubts the naked accuracy of these words, let him dip into the pages of Appendix A. (Papers on the Indebtedness of the Agricultural Classes in Bombay.) A more damning indictment was never recorded against a civilised government.”

Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, in his “India Under Ripon,” pages 236–238, observes:

“No one accustomed to Eastern travel can fail to see how poor the Indian peasant is. Travelling by either of the great lines of railways which bisect the Continent, one need hardly leave one’s carriage to be aware of this. . . . In every village which I visited I heard of complaints . . . of over-taxation of the country, of increase and inequalities of assessment . . . complaints of the forest laws, of the decrease of the stock of working cattle, of their deterioration through the price of salt, of universal debt to the users. . . .

Says the same writer, earlier in his work, page 232:

“India’s famines have been severer and frequent; its agricultural poverty has deepened, its rural population has become more hopelessly in debt, their despair more desperate. The system of constantly enhancing the land-values has not been altered. The salt tax though slightly lowered, still robs the very poor. Hunger, and those pestilences which are the result of hunger, are spread over an increasing, not diminishing area. The Deccan ryot is still the poorest peasant in the world. Nothing of the system of finance is changed, nothing in the economy which favours English trade and English speculation at the expense of India’s native industries. What was bad twenty-five years ago, is worse now. At any rate, there is the same drain of India’s food to alien mouths. Endemic famines and endemic plagues are facts no official statistics can explain away.” (The italics are mine.)

In 1888 a confidential enquiry into the economic condition of the people of India was made by Lord Dufferin. The results of the enquiry have never been made public, but extracts from the reports of the United Provinces of Agra and Oude, and the Punjab, have been published by Mr. Digby in his monumental work. These reports are well worth the attention of the student of economic conditions in India. We can only refer to them briefly. One of the most interesting documents is the report of Mr. A. H. Harrington, Commissioner, of April 4, 1888. Mr. Harrington quotes Mr. Bennett, the compiler of the Oude Gazetteer, an officer whom he calls “wholly free from pessimism,” as to the condition of the lowest castes of Oude:

“The lowest depths of misery and degradation are reached by the Koris and Chamars,” whom he describes as “always on the verge of starvation.” These represent from 10 to 11 per cent. of the population of Oude. Mr. Harrington then quotes from papers he had himself contributed to The Pioneer in 1876, under the heading, “Oude Affairs”:

“It has been calculated that about 60 per cent. of the entire native population . . . are sunk in such abject poverty that unless the small earnings of child labour are added to the scanty stock by which the family is kept alive, some members would starve.”

Whether the impression that the greater number of the people of India suffer from a daily insufficiency of food is true or untrue, he adds:

“My own belief, after a great deal of study of the closely connected questions of agricultural indebtedness, is that the impression is perfectly true as regards a varying but always considerable number throughout the greater part of India.”

Mr. A. J. Lawrence, then Commissioner, Allahabad Division, who retired in 1891, reports:

“I believe there is very little between poorer classes of the people and semi-starvation, but where is the remedy?”

Of Shahjehanpur, another district of the United Provinces, it is stated: “The landless labourer’s condition is by no means all that could be desired. The combined earnings of a man, his wife and two children cannot be put at more than Rs. 3 a month. [Less than a dollar of American money.] When prices of food grains are low or moderate, work regular and the health of the household good, this income will enable the family to have one fairly good meal a day, to keep a thatched roof over their heads, to buy cheap clothing and occasionally a thin blanket. Cold and rain undoubtedly entail considerable suffering, as the people are insufficiently clothed, and cannot afford fires. A few twigs or dried sticks constitute the height of their ambition, and these, owing to the increased value and scarcity of wood, are more and more difficult for the poor man to obtain.” (The italics are in the original.)

Mr. White, Collector of Banda, states:

“A large number of the lower classes clearly demonstrate by their physique, either that they are habitually starved, or have been exposed in early years to the severity of famines; if any young creature be starved while growing, no amount of subsequent fattening will make up for the injury sustained.”

Mr. Rose, Collector of Ghazipur, says:

“Where the holding is of average size, and the tenant unencumbered with debt, when his rent is not excessive and there is an average out turn of produce; when in fact, conditions are favourable, the position of the agriculturist is, on the whole, fairly comfortable. But unfortunately, these conditions do not always exist. As a rule, a very large proportion are in debt.”

Of the Jhansi Division, Mr. Ward, Commissioner, says:

“A very small proportion in this division are habitually underfed.”

Mr. Bays, officiating Commissioner for Sitapur Division, records particulars obtained from twenty families taken at random:

“Nineteen shillings, twopence or less than five dollars per annum for each adult.

“Nine shillings, sixpence, or less than two and a half dollars per annum for each child.”

He is of the opinion that this is sufficient to keep them in good health, and adds: “For some reasons, it is not desirable at present that the standard of comfort should be very materially raised.”

Mr. Irwin, Deputy Commissioner of Rae Barali, says:

“The mass of the agricultural population, in ordinary times, and the elite always, get enough to eat; but there is a considerable minority in bad seasons who feel the pinch of hunger, and a small minority . . . suffer from chronic hunger, except just at harvest time when grain is plentiful, and easily to be had. I do not understand that the indigent town population are intended to be included in this enquiry. There can be no doubt that they suffer much more than the agricultural classes for want of food, especially the unfortunate purdah-nashin women, and indeed, men too, of good and impoverished families, who have sunk in the world, who are ashamed to beg, and live on the remnants of their property and whom every rise in prices hits cruelly hard. For such people dear grain means starvation, while to the producer, it of course means increased value of the produce.”

Mr. G. Toynbee, C. S. L., former Member of the Viceroy’s Council and Senior Member of the Board of Revenue, said:

“The conclusion to be drawn is that of the agricultural population, 40 per cent. are insufficiently fed, to say nothing of clothing and housing. They have enough food to support life and enable them to work, but they have to undergo long fasts, having for a considerable part of the year to satisfy themselves with one full meal a day.”

Grierson’s statistics, summed up in The Pioneer, in 1893, state:

“Briefly, it is that all persons of the labouring classes, and ten per cent. of the cultivating and artisan classes, or 45 per cent. of the total population are insufficiently fed, or housed, or both. It follows that nearly one hundred millions of people in British India are living in extreme poverty.”

The Punjab is supposed to be one of the most prosperous provinces of India. Mr. Thorburn, Member of the Punjab Commission, one-time Financial Commissioner, says of the agriculturists of that province in his book entitled, “The Punjab in Peace and War”:

“It is worthy of note that the whole revenue of the Punjab, from the largest item, land revenue, to the smallest stamps, £10,000, are practically drawn from the producing masses, whilst the literate and commercial classes, whom the new régime was to benefit at the expense of those masses, escape almost untaxed. (Page 175.)

“Since the mutiny, there have been in all, seven years of famine, viz.: 1860-1, 1876-8, 1896-7, 1899-1901; in addition, scarcities from short droughts in semi-dependent tracts, have been frequent. During the earlier famines, four years in all, out of the annual land revenue demand, apart from water rates or canal irrigated lands, hardly 2 per cent. were suspended, and the fraction ultimately remitted, or written off as irrecoverable, was infinitesimal. Since 1896, the destitution of a large part of the cultivators having been officially proved, the Government has been less niggardly in granting suspensions and remissions. [Italics are mine.] Unfortunately, the relief given coming too late, fails to reach the classes who most require it — the poorest of the peasant proprietary — and only saves the pockets of the capitalist mortgagees and purchasers of holdings. (Page 242.)

“If it be remembered that the average daily income per head of the Indian population is less than three halfpence, and that fully 25 per cent. of that population never attain that average, the hand to mouth existence of the Punjab peasantry, even in normal years, will be realised. If so, their general inability to pay, without borrowing, the land revenue, or to even avoid death from starvation whenever a scarcity from drought occurs, let alone a famine period, requires no demonstration. (Page 243.)

“The Government pronouncement now was that even if the masses of the old peasantry were sinking, it was too late to change a system which, judged by all the criteria applied to European countries, cultivated area, production, revenue under all heads, consumption of spirits and drugs, all showing steady progress except during and immediately after famines. Were the Punjab a single estate, and all the cultivators tenants at will with only one landlord, these criteria would doubtless indicate prosperity. But seeing that its lands are, or were, owned until some thirty years ago by a round million of peasant proprietary families, their prosperity cannot be measured by the gross volume of production and consumption, but depends on the due diffusion amongst the producing masses of the profits of their labours. Statistically, the Punjab might be the richest country, yet its people the poorest, in India, if they were the rack-rented tenants of capitalists. That is the condition towards which our ‘system’ until 1900 was reducing the ‘finest peasantry in India.’” (Page 254.)

Among the latest opinions on this subject, we have that of Mr. C. J. O’Donnell, retired member of the Indian Civil Service, as expressed in his book entitled: “The Failure of Lord Curzon”:

“India is rapidly becoming a land steeped in perennial poverty, and unless some strong and early steps are taken, the English people will find itself face to face with annual famines, due chiefly to the exactions of the State, to the oppression of the poor by the ‘Imperialist Empire Builder.’”

As an independent observer, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., the Labour leader of Great Britain, may be quoted here. In his book, “The Awakening of India,” published in 1910, he remarks:

“Sir William Hunter said that 40,000,000 Indians go through life with insufficient food; Sir Charles Elliott estimated that one-half of the agricultural population never satisfied hunger from one year’s end to the other; from thirty to fifty million families live in India on an income which does not exceed threepence per day. The poverty of India is not an opinion,—it is a fact.”

For independent estimates of the existing conditions of life in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies see the Appendices for extracts from recent articles. We give the rates of wages also in an appendix. Some more opinions are given in other parts of the book (see the Preface and the Conclusion).