The British found this system unsatisfactory, the author continues. Tax varied depending on the rains and the British didn’t want the uncertainty. So they replaced the old system with a fixed tax, based on acreage and long-term productivity. “They appointed the largest landowner as their collection agent… The landlord became the patron of the village, and, in turn, was part of the Raj’s patronage network.”

There were many flip sides to the system. For instance, if the crops were weak in some years, there was no tax relief. Peasants had to borrow and pay tax. “If there was a shortage of food, almost no relief was provided by the state to stave off famine.”

What happened after Independence? “Agriculture was handed over to the individual States to administer and tax,” narrates Dossani. “The rural elites were left alone — primarily, their income was not taxed and land was not redistributed to the poor — so long as they delivered the vote… During Nehru’s rule, the States were deprived of funds to support agricultural development, and the condition of agriculture continued to deteriorate.”

The sad story of Indian agriculture is one of farmers who successfully fed urban India but not themselves, rues the author. “A telling statistic is that the poorest third of the population, mostly rural, consumes about 1,600 calories per day from various sources. This is about a third below their requirement. As a result, one-third of Indian children are born severely malnourished, and 50 per cent of rural children below five years of age are underweight. Over a third of rural children are severely stunted as a result.”

It may be fashionable to hold British rule responsible for many of India’s problems, but it is unfair to blame British economic policy for the current state of rural India, argues Dossani. “Several countries began in the 1950s with the same legacy of rural underdevelopment as India and subsequently did much better. For instance, by the end of the 1970s, when China had yet to begin its economic reforms, Jean Dreze and Amarya Sen point out that ‘almost the entire rural population had access to essential health services at a reasonable cost’.”

India’s rural problem, he reasons, is perhaps not so much because of the extortionate rates of tax or neglect of agriculture during British rule, as due to the system of rural governance based on private patronage the Raj introduced. “In Independent India, this has proven more destructive and difficult to dislodge or reform than the most pernicious forms of bureaucracy that the British or Indians have devised.”

Educative.

D. MURALI

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