Peasant indebtedness
Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
Peasant indebtedness means peasants falling deeper and deeper into debt to moneylenders under colonial rule. High revenue demands, famines and falling prices left cultivators unable to pay the state. Borrowing became the only way out. Even the spread of farming onto new land was paid for with loans. By the 1840s, officials reported alarming levels of rural debt in the Bombay Deccan.
Example
After the cotton boom of 1861–65 ended, sahukars (moneylenders) in the Bombay Deccan refused fresh loans to ryots who were already in debt. The anger this caused exploded in the Deccan Riots of 1875.
Don't confuse with
- Drain of wealth: this was the flow of India's wealth to Britain. Peasant indebtedness was a problem inside the village, between the ryot and the moneylender.
Related concepts
- David Ricardo
- Ricardian theory of rent
- Rentier
- Bombay Deccan
- Thomas Munro
- Ryotwari system
- Temporary settlement
- Mahalwari system
- Malguzar
- Deccan famine of 1832-34