VI
THE POVERTY WHICH BRITAIN
WROUGHT
In spite of a few spectacular fortunes in the hands
of a very small number of industrialists, British Rule
has definitely brought growing poverty to India, Incon-
trovertible figures establish the fact.
The present agricultural wages in Northern India
is worth only about one-half of the quantity of food-
grains available to the agricultural worker or day-
labourer on the prevailing scale of wages in Akbar's
time. Both Pelsaert and De Laet mention that during
the Mogul times the lower classes were consuming
butter every day with khichri. Terry specifically men-
tions "the great store of salt, abundance of sugar grow-
ing in India." Sugar, sold at 2d. per Ib. (about 5 pies),
entered more commonly as an item of household con-
sumption of the poorer classes than in modern India.
Blochmann observes that under the Moguls and be-
fore, the use of woollens and, for the poorer classes,
blankets was much more general than now.
By about the nineteenth century, as Buchmann's
survey shows, "the supply of milk, oil, sugar, vege-
tables, pulses, salt and other seasoning was more
scanty and the people of Bihar and Bengal could not
afford the daily use of rice."
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