Vol. 6 · pages 41–45

26 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES among the developmental expenditure of a country the Public Works take a prominent position. Applying the same criterion we are compelled to condemn the entire fiscal system of the East India Company. Before 1853 the administration was engaged in war operations and not only did not project any new scheme of public works, but it allowed the old ones to fall rapidly into decay. Dr. Spray in his “Modern India” (1837) says “It is in the territories of the independent native chiefs and princes that great and useful works are found and maintained. In our territories the canals, bridges and reservoirs, wells, groves, etc., the works of our predecessors from revenues expressly appropriated for such undertakings are going fast to decay.” Speaking of the Public Works in India, Mr. John Bright said “With regard to public works, if I were speaking for the natives of India, I would state this fact, that in a single English country there are more roads—more travelable roads— than are to be found in the whole of India; and I would say also, that the single city of Manchester, in the supply of its inhabitants in the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in the fourteen years—from 1834 to 1848— in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its dominions. I would say that the real activity of the Indian Government has been an activity of conquest and annexation.” Before the “Department of Public Works” was made uniform for all the Presidencies of India the important branch of administration was conducted in various ways. In Bombay it was conducted by the Military Board : Though subordinate, the Superintendent of Roads and Tanks was outside the Military Board. In Bengal the Military Board had the entire control. In Madras the administration of this department was threefold : There was— (1) The Public Works Department of the Board of Revenue. (2) The Superintendent of Roads. (3) The Military Board.

27ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY This variety in the system was reduced to uniformity by Lord Dulhousie who created a separate department of the state for dealing with questions connected with Public Works. We will review in brief the Public Works that were executed under the regime of the East India Company. (1) Canals Ganges Canal—449 1/2 miles. East and West Jumna Canal—445 miles of the West Jumna Canal were completed. Punjab Canals—425 miles of the Boree-Doab Canal in the Punjab were executed in May, 1856. Madras Irrigation Works—Tanks, reservoirs, and “annicuts” or dams, across the beds of the Cauvery, Godavery, and Kistna Rivers. (2) Truck Roads miles cost From Calcutta to Peshawar 1,423 1,423,000 From Calcutta to Bombay 1,002 500,000 From Madras to Bangalore 200 37,121 From Bombay to Agra 734 243,676 From Rangoon to Prome 200 160,000 (3) Railways From Calcutta to Burdwan 120 From Bombay to Wassind 50 From Bombay to Compooie 10 From Madras to Vellore 81 (4) Electric Telegraphs From Calcutta to Peshawar in all about 4000 milesFrom Agra to Bombay From Bombay to Madras Mr. Hendricks says “Comparative to area and population, the extension of these works has not been either so great or so continuous as might be desired. If we exclude those undertakings that are of a purely military character, and review the items which may be classed under Land and Water Channels of Communication and Irrigation Works, or in other words, the Revenue— productive Public Works, in recent years of most activity, it

28 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES appears that an outlay of about one million and a half sterling has been the maximum for one year. If we take the most immediately productive works, viz.: of Canalization, Irrigation, it will be seen that not more than 738,015 in the year 1853-54, and 543,333 in the year 1854-55, was thus expended. “The condition of the Revenue, as preventing a more rapid and extensive outlay, has hitherto been an answer to those who might have been disposed to urge that even these amounts are insignificant, when the British Indian territory of 837,000 square miles, and its 132,000,000 of souls are considered. This answer resolves itself purely into one of alleged difficulty. That this difficulty is only apparent, and might be remedied, is evident, not only from the practical testimony of the productive results of such expenditure in the instances before adverted to, but also from the history and policy of the other branches of the Colonial Empire of this country. And the history of the East India Company, or of the trading companies of other countries, has shown no exception to the general rule, that expenditure on carefully selected objects of enterprise may often appear lavish and purposeless when it is but showing the field whose harvest is the proof of the wise economy of that expenditure.” The Pressure of the Revenue This branch of our study is entirely out of question : not that it is beyond our scope but there are innumerable drawbacks in our way. First and foremost is, that we have no absolutely correct statistics regarding population. Census was never known at that period and any estimate of the population is at nest a guess too broad and vague to be made the basis of any scientific conclusion. Another serious handicap in the way of such a study is the fact that every year the East India Company saw its territory extended by several units of miles and one often wonders whether the swell in the revenue is due to the high rate of taxation or the extension of territory. Thirdly, the Revenue accounts of the East India Company are anything but perfect. As noticed before, they were mixed with the

29ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY commercial accounts till 1813 and when they were separated by the Parliamentary mandate they were hardly made intelligible. These serious handicaps consequently compel us to leave aside this important phase of our study. Certain detached statements if grouped together may convey to us some idea regarding the pressure of the Revenue. Speaking about the Land Tax alone, Mr. R: C. Dutt, besides whom there is no better authority on the subject, says, “The Land Tax levied by the British Government is not only excessive, but, what is worse, it is fluctuating and uncertain in many provinces. In England, the Land Tax was between one shilling and four shillings in the pound, i.e. between five and twenty percent of the rental, during a hundred years before 1798, when it was made perpetual and redeemable by William Pitt. In Bengal the Land Tax was fixed at over ninety percent of the rental, and in Northern India at over eighty percent of the rental, between 1793 and 1822. It is true that the British Government only followed the precedent of the previous Mohamedan rulers who also claimed an enormous Land Tax. But the difference was this, that what the Mohamedan rulers claimed they could never fully realize : what the British rulers claimed they realized with rigor. The last Mohamedan ruler of Bengal, in the last year of his administration (1764) realized a land revenue of £817,553 : within thirty years the British rulers realized a land revenue of £ 2,680,000 in the same Province. In 1802 the Nawab of Oudh ceded Allahabad and some other rich districts in Northern India to the British Government. The land revenue which was claimed by the British rulers within three years of the cessation was £ 1,682,306. In Madras, the Land Tax first imposed by the East India Company was one-half the gross produce of the land. In Bombay, the land revenue of the territory conquered from the Marattas in 1817 was 800,000 in the year of the conquest: it was raised to 1,500,000 within a few days of the British rule : and it has been continuously raised since. “No native prince demands the rent which we do,” wrote Bishop Heber in 1826, after travelling all through India, and visiting British and native states. “A Land Tax which now exists in India,” wrote Colonel Briggs in 1830, “professing to absorb the whole of the landlord’s rent, was never known under any government in Europe or Asia.”

30 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES “The people of Bengal and of Northern India gradually obtained some relief from the heavy land assessment of the early years of the British rule. In Bengal the assessment was made permanent; and it has not been raised with the extension of cultivation, it now bears (including Road and Public Works assessments, which have been since imposed on the rental) a ratio of about 35 per cent on the rental. In Northern India the assessment was not made permanent, but was reduced to slightly over 50 per cent including all assessments, in 1855. But new assessments were added : calculations were made not on the current, but on the prospective rental until the tax rose to close upon 60 per cent on the rental.” In Bombay and Madras things remained pretty much the same. In both these Presidencies the Ryotwar Settlement prevails. The working of this Ryotwar system of land tenure during the regime of the East India Company is best described by Mr. Fullerton (member of the Madras Government)— “Imagine,” he says, “the whole landed interest—that is, all the landlords of Great Britain, and even the capital farmers, at once swept away from off the face of the earth : imagine a rent fixed on every field in the kingdom, seldom under, generally above its means of payment: imagine the land so rented, lotted out to the villagers according to the number of their cattle and ploughs, to the extent of forty or fifty acres each. Imagine the revenue rated as above, leviable through the agency of one hundred thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion, according to their idea of the occupant’s means of paying, whether from the produce of his land or his separate property : and in order to encourage every man to act as a spy on his neighbour, and report his means of paying, that he may eventually save himself from extra demand; imagine all the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand, in order to make up for the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. Imagine collectors to every country acting under the orders of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all temptation to labour, by a general equalization of assessment: seizing and sending back runaways to each other: and lastly, imagine the collector, the sole magistrates, or justice of the peace