India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    462/552 page 432
    It has sometimes been loudly asserted by persons imperfectly acquainted with the facts, that in Bengal, in consequence of the Permanent Settlement, the country has been preserved from famine, that the cultivators are more prosperous than in other parts of India, that agri- cultural enterprise has been fostered, and private capital accumulated which has been devoted to useful industries and to public works and industries. I have already referred to the exhaustive inquiry made by the Govern- ment of Lord Curzon in 1901 into the whole subject of the Land Revenue administration throughout India. The conclusions arrived at were established by a mass of unimpeachable evidence. It was shown that there was no foundation whatever for any such contentions as those which had been urged. Failure of the periodical rains is far less common than in the greater part of India, but when it has occurred, Bengal has suffered like other provinces. As regards the condition of cultivators there is, the Government of India demonstrated, not only no ground for the contention that their position, owing to the Permanent Settlement, has been converted into one of exceptional comfort and prosperity, but such assertions are directly contrary to the fact. “It is precisely because this was not the case, and because, so far from being generously treated by the zemindars, the Bengal cultivator was rack-rented, impoverished, and oppressed, that the Government of India felt compelled to intervene on his behalf, and by the series of legislative measures that commenced with the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1859 and culminated in the Act of 1885, to place him in the position of greater security which he now enjoys. As for the allegation that the Permanent Settlement has been the means of develop- ing in Bengal an exceptional flow of public-spirited
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