Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c3.49

c3.49

Dharampal found that for long periods in the late 18th and the 19th centuries, the tax on land in many areas exceeded the total agricultural production of very fertile land. This was particularly so in the areas of the Madras Presidency (comprising current Tamilnadu, districts of coastal Andhra, some districts of Karnataka and Malabar). The consequences of the policy were easy to predict: in the Madras Presidency, one third of the most fertile land went out of cultivation between the period 1800-1850. In fact, as early as 1804, the Governor of the Madras Presidency wrote to his masters (the President of the Board of Commissioners) in London: