Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1878 — The Poverty of India. [ARTICLE]

The Poverty of India.

India has been for half a century too poor even to bear the slight cost of developing her own resources. The grand mistake we have made has been in ruling her as if she were the El Dorado of romance instead of the famine-stricken, pauperized empire of reality. What wealth there is exists in the hands of the few, of whom the majority are foreigners. But public burdens and the cost of government are wrung from the penniless pockets of the poor, who, wuile they can hardly keep body and soul together, have been expected to pay for costly “improvements,” involving liabilities that it would tax the energies of the richest states to meet. Two millstones hang around the neck of the Indian empire— (1) ever-increas-ing debt, (2) constantly-recurring deficits. When the company handed over the country to the crown in 1858 the debt of India was £59,500,000. It is now £234,000,000. In 1858 the charge for interest on debt was £2,500,000. It is now over £11,000,000, and, allowing that railways and canals clear off nominally about £3,700,000, we have still an annual debt charge to be met out of the taxes of £7,300,000. Of course it is said that this huge debt has conferred benefits on India in the shape of public works. Of the railways we may safely say they were built on an extravagant gauge, which even a rich country like England could not have afforded, and that when they are not a dead loss they pay about 3; per cent, of the 5 per cent, dividend guaranteed by the state. The very “improvement” in their business is due to the famine traffic. As to the irrigation works, they are a dead loss. In Bengal alone the loss on these schemes in 1875-’76 was £203,700, and that, too, when only £4,072,742 was spent by way of outlay. Even Sir John Strachey dares not conjecture what the loss will be when the outlay reaches, as under the existing system it must, £B,000,000. —London Examiner.