Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s2: § 2. Economic life of India, how changed
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s2
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§ 2. Economic life of India, how changed
v4.c59.s2.1
Under British rule, the change in our economic life has been as great as that of our social life Soon after the establishment of British paramountcy, India was struck by the full blast of the Industrial Revolution in England; then came the introduction of steamer transport to Europe, the opening of railways in India, and finally the cutting of the Suez Canal. All these factors united to destroy the economic system under which the Indian millions had toiled, fed themselves, and provided the needs of their government for centuries during the middle ages. Gone was India's monopoly of indigo, saltpetre and cotton fabrics in the world market. She now sank into a producer of raw materials in the bulk instead of finished articles or of luxuries of small bulk and high value as in Mughal times. Even her coarse and coloured cotton exports to the South and East Asiatic world ceased, though these had formed more than a quarter of the East India Company's annual investment in the Mughal times.
v4.c59.s2.2
The attempts made in the Eighteen seventies by Sir George Birdwood, Sir William Hunter and other kind British officers, to save our artisan class from starvation by promoting the manufacture and sale of curios and objects of art, for foreign tourists, had exactly the same practical effect as applying a mop to the Atlantic waves rolling on the beach of England. In the meantime the situation was hopelessly worsened by the rise in the price of food grains due to the inflation of currency caused by the vast amount of specie sent to India to buy her raw goods for export and to pay her labourers on the daily expanding roads and railways. The real wages of our labourers could never keep pace with the rise in the price of food and clothing. Hence the blank despair which faced M. G. Ranadé, Romesh C. Dutt and G. K. Gokhalé as they contemplated India's economic future near the close of the 19th century. Cash crops and mass production of some low commodities became, no doubt, novel features of India's economic life under British rule, but they could not fully offset the daily rising price of food and increase in the number of hungry mouths without employment.