RC Dutta

• R.C Dutt was born in Bengal family
• R.C. Dutt's fundamental books

  • Economic History of India (2 volumes)
  • Famines in India (2 volumes)
• R.C. Dutt on Imperialism: 'India in the 18th century was a great manufacturing as well as great agricultural country...'
• Orders were sent to force Indian artisans to work in company's factories
• Prohibitive tariffs excluded Indian silk and cotton goods from England
• Millions of Indian artisans lost their earnings
• The population of India lost one great source of wealth and resulted in their helpless dependence on agriculture
• The invention of power loom in Europe completed the decline of the Indian industries
• An excise duty was imposed on the production of cotton fabrics in India which disabled the Indian manufacturer from competing with the manufacturers of Japan and China
• When taxes are raised and spent in a country

  The money circulates among the people, fructifies trade, industries, and agriculture, and in one shape or another reaches the mass of the people
• When taxes raised in the country are remitted out of it

  The money is lost to the country forever; it does not stimulate her trades or industries, or reach the people in any form
• Large amount of money was annually drained from the revenues of India
• If manufacturers were crippled, agriculture over-taxed and a third of the revenue remitted out of the country, any nation on earth would suffer from permanent poverty and recurring famines
• If India is poor today, it is through the operation of economic causes
• If India was prosperous under these circumstances, it would be an economic miracle
• Science knows no miracles. Economic laws are constant and unvarying in operation
• R.C. Dutt's views on imperialism
• R. C. Dutt views on Land taxation: 'Agriculture was virtually the only remaining source of national wealth in India...'
• The Land tax levied by the British Government in India was excessive and fluctuating
• In Bengal, the Land Tax was fixed at over 90% of the rental, and in northern India at over 80% of the rental between 1793 and 1882
• In Madras, the Land tax first imposed by the East India Company was half of the gross produce of land
• In Madras and Bombay, the Land Tax was generally paid by the cultivators of the soil
• The British government sometimes approximates to the whole of the economic rent as Land Tax, leaving...
• The British government declared its intention in 1864 of realising as Land Tax about one-half of the economic rent
• At present, what the British government takes as Land Tax sometimes approximates to the whole of the economic rent, leaving the cultivators little beyond the wages of their labour and the profits of their agricultural stock
• The land tax is received once every thirty years
• The uncertainty of Land Tax paralyses agriculture, prevents savings, and keeps the tiller of the soil in a state of poverty and indebtedness
• The Land Tax in India is heavy and uncertain, and the principle on which it is raised is different from well-administered countries
• In well-administered countries


  The State promotes the accumulation of wealth, helps the people to put money into their pockets, and demands a small share of their earnings for the expenses of the State
• In India


  The State interferes with the accumulation of wealth from the soil, intercepts the incomes and gains of the tillers, and adds to its land revenue demand at each recurring settlement, leaving the cultivators permanently poor
• In England, Germany, the United States, France, and other countries, the State widens the income of the people, extends their markets, opens out new sources of wealth, and grows richer with the nation
• In India, the State has fostered no new industries and revived no old industries for the people; instead, it intervenes at each recurring land settlement to take what it considers its share out of the produce of the soil
• Each new settlement in Bombay and Madras is regarded by the people as a wrangle between them and the State as to how much the former will keep and how much the latter will take
• The revenue increases and the people remain destitute
• Indian poet: 'Taxation raised by the King is like the moisture of the earth sucked by the sun, to be returned to the earth as fertilising rain, but the moisture raised from the Indian soil now descends as fertilising rain largely on other lands, not on India'
• Every nation reasonably expects that the proceeds of taxes raised in the country should be mainly spent in the country
• Under the rule of the East India Company, the profits of India were withdrawn from India and deposited in Europe
• The expenses of the mutiny wars vastly added to Indian liabilities and demand increases in Taxation
• Commerce could not be taxed against the wishes of British merchants and British voters; the increased taxes therefore fell on agriculture
• From 1871, a number of new taxes were assessed