Indian agriculture was dominated by subsistence farming before British rule. Farmers grew only enough to sustain their villages. Under British rule, agriculture became the backbone of the Indian economy, with 85% of the population involved in farming. The British implemented the zamindari system to extract revenue, creating parasitic landlords and impoverishing peasants, who lost their lands and became landless laborers. Agriculture was commercialized for cash crops for British industry rather than food crops, further exploiting farmers. By independence, the agricultural system was in ruin due to the deleterious policies of the British that undermined traditional farming practices.

1. Indian Economy on the Eve of
Independence
Group 1: Agricultural Sector
Group Members : Aarush Verma
Abhijeet Bharadwaj
Aditya Garg
Anirudh Damani
Ansh Rastogi
Class XII-C1
INDIAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

2. AGRICULTURE BEFORE THE
BRITISH ARRIVAL
"When the British left, India was a multireligious, multiethnic
country, exploited, backward and poor from colonialism.“
THROUGH THE EYES OF HISTORIANS
• Indian economy was, in a bird's eye view, an agriculturally
dominated economy.
• Before the British colonial period, Indian agriculture was
dominated by subsistence
farming organized in
small village communities.

3. • The farmer usually only grew enough food to feed himself and
the non-agricultural people of the village community. When
his crop production exceeded consumption because of
favourable climatic conditions, he stored the surplus for use
in lean years.
• The storage of food grains constituted the only remedy against
famines and other crises.
IN SUM AND SUBSTANCE, THE FARMERS OF INDIA
BEFORE THE BRITISH ENJOYED A LIFE FULL OF
SATISFACTION, PRODUCING ONLY FOR THEIR
SUSTENENCE.

4. THROUGH THE EYES OF ECONOMISTS
• During the British rule, about 85% of Indian population lived
in villages and 70% of it was dependent directly or indirectly
on agriculture.
• The contribution to GDP by agriculture remained the same
even after independence and during the British rule, but the
standard of living and the status of farmers substantially
declined.
China
India
Japan United States

5. • Unemployment during British rule was on an all time high, as
the jobs of craftsmen had been dispelled by the British, who
systematically dismantled the handicraft industry.
• As a result, many of the former artisans were absorbed into
agriculture, only increasing its plight multifold.
• As a result, negative returns started arising from agriculture.
Though the number of people it fed was extremely high, but
only about 4% of them could be called prosperous.

6. THROUGH THE EYES OF BRITISH
• The British saw agriculture only as a golden cow: all they were
worried about was how they could churn out more and more
money from the earlier flourishing agriculture.
• In this quest, they badly harmed the agricultural framework of
the country. Only bent on collecting revenues, they brought
about the land revenue systems, the most notable being the
zamindari system.

7. THE ZAMINDARI SYSTEM: A DYSMAL
HEADACHE FOR FARMERS.
• At the end of the eighteenth century, village communities
began to disband under the pressure of new forces.
• The permanent land settlement of Lord Cornwallis in 1793
impacted Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, and later North Madras,
forming a class of zamindars, a social elite group with the
right to collect tax.
House of Zamindars

8. • The zamindars became landlords in perpetuity and were the
intermediaries between the colonial rulers and the peasantry.
Peasants were required to pay fixed amounts of money to the
zamindars.
• Most of the cultivators became landless labourers. To pay
taxes to the government, the peasants were forced to borrow
from the moneylender, compounding the problem because
indebted peasants could not be agricultural producers, thus
throwing them into a debt trap.

9. WHY THE ZAMINDARS STABBED
TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE
• Under the Zamindari system, the Zamindari was recognised
as the owner who could mortgage, bequeath and sell the land.
The state held the Zamindari responsible for the payment of
land revenue and in default thereof the land could be
confiscated and sold out.
• The zamindars did not heed the economic conditions or
problems of the farmers, they just
wanted to deposit the revenue and
enjoy their own portion of profit.

10. • They therefore did nothing to sympathise, let go improve the
famers' state. Hence, the farmers had to cut their own pockets
to pay the revenue.
• Moreover, they had to submit the revenue and rent to the
state at specified dates and hence they did not care about
whether the money actually came from farming or from loans
of farmers.
Basically, it was a win-win situation for the zamindars
and British and a lose-lose situation for the farmers,
small cultivators and share croppers who were
stranded between the state and zamindars.

11. THROUGH THE EYES OF THE FARMERS
• The farmers were completely stuck in a trap; the land revenue
system, the production of cash crops were all designed to
exploit them.
• There were some social tensions, but they never assumed the
shape of a a larger struggle.

12. • The farmers had no advanced technology to carry out
agriculture, moreover, with the traditional methods
abandoned, they were falling deeper into the abyss of poverty.
• Production was carried out with simple irrigation techniques
purely dependent on the monsoon patterns, with irrational
tools and negligent use of fertilisers as the british state
wanted only profit, not prosperity.
• Some of the peasants were even forced to give away their
lands, which was confiscated if taxes were not paid and in
some cases forcefully snatched.
• There was fragmentation of land holdings and the zamindars
did nothing to encourage the development of collective
farming techniques, already flourishing in Russia at the time.

13. THROUGH THE EYES OF BRITISH
PLANNERS
The British brought about a complete commercialisation of
India's agriculture.
• Commercialisation translates to the emphasis n production of
cash crops instead of food crops, the food crops life wheat,
rice, barley etc. prevalent before in the Indian subcontinent.
• The cash crops include cotton and other textile crops which
were exported to the British industries for producing finished
clothes there.

14. • Indigo cropping was encouraged in many states like Bihar
• Therefore, the needs of India were kept on the side-lines and
the British slowly transformed India to a self sustained agro
nation to one with stagnated agriculture and a corrupt land
revenue system.
• Still, the agriculture formed about 50% of India's GDP but
most of it was in British hands and the traitors of India- the
zamindars.

15. CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, the British played a role in paralysing the Indian
economy and led to the complete wrack and ruin of the
agricultural sector. They saw India as a cash cow and as a colony,
not as a society or as an economy teeming in itself. Agriculture
fell into such a great whirlpool that rescuing it took decades of
effective planning in India.
The story is depressing, but only these stories are the ones worth
to the told, because they have a mine of lessons we can learn
from.