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How the British impoverished India
When the Crown took over from the Company, from 1861 a clever system was developed under which all of India’s financial gold and forex earnings from its fast-rising commodity export surplus with the world, was intercepted and appropriated by Britain.
Oct 30, 2018
Utsa Patnaik
The British historians Phyllis Deane and WA Cole presented an incorrect estimate of Britain’s 18th-19th century trade volume, by leaving out re-exports completely. I found that by 1800 Britain’s total trade was 62% higher than their estimate, on applying the correct definition of trade including re-exports, that is used by the United Nations and by all other international organisations.
The British historians Phyllis Deane and WA Cole presented an incorrect estimate of Britain’s 18th-19th century trade volume, by leaving out re-exports completely. I found that by 1800 Britain’s total trade was 62% higher than their estimate, on applying the correct definition of trade including re-exports, that is used by the United Nations and by all other international organisations.
‘How exactly did the British manage to diddle us and drain our wealth’ ? was the question that Basudev Chatterjee (later editor of a volume in the Towards Freedom project ) had posed to me 50 years ago when we were fellow-students abroad. After decades of research I find that using India’s commodity export surplus as the measure and applying an interest rate of 5%, the total drain from 1765 to 1938, compounded up to 2016, comes to £9.2 trillion; since $4.86 exchanged for £1 those days, this sum equals about $45 trillion.
The exact mechanism of drain, or transfers from India to Britain was quite simple. The key factor was Britain’s control over our taxation revenues combined with control over India’s financial gold and forex earnings from its booming commodity export surplus with the world. Simply put, Britain used locally raised rupee tax revenues to pay for its net import of goods, a highly abnormal use of budgetary funds not seen in any sovereign country. The East India Company from 1765 onwards allocated every year up to one-third of Indian budgetary revenues net of collection costs, to buy a large volume of goods for direct import into Britain, far in excess of that country’s own needs. Since tropical goods were highly prized in other cold temperate countries which could never produce them, in effect these free goods represented international purchasing power for Britain which kept a part for its own use and re-exported the balance to other countries in Europe and North America against import of food grains, iron and other goods in which it was deficient. The British historians Phyllis Deane and WA Cole presented an incorrect estimate of Britain’s 18th-19th century trade volume, by leaving out re-exports completely. I found that by 1800 Britain’s total trade was 62% higher than their estimate, on applying the correct definition of trade including re-exports, that is used by the United Nations and by all other international organisations.
When the Crown took over from the Company, from 1861 a clever system was developed under which all of India’s financial gold and forex earnings from its fast-rising commodity export surplus with the world, was intercepted and appropriated by Britain. As before up to a third of India’s rising budgetary revenues was not spent domestically but was set aside as ‘expenditure abroad’. The Secretary of State for India in Council, based in London, invited foreign importers to deposit with him the payment (in gold, sterling and their own currencies) for their net imports from India, and these gold and forex payments disappeared into the yawning maw of the SoS’s account in the Bank of England. Against India’s net foreign earnings he issued bills, termed Council bills (CBs), to an equivalent rupee value. The rate (between gold-linked sterling and silver rupee) at which the bills were issued, was carefully adjusted to the last farthing, so that foreigners would never find it more profitable to ship financial gold as payment directly to Indians, compared to using the CB route. Foreign importers then sent the CBs by post or by telegraph to the export houses in India, that via the exchange banks were paid out of the budgeted provision of sums under ‘expenditure abroad’, and the exporters in turn paid the producers (peasants and artisans) from whom they sourced the goods.
The United Nations (1962) historical data for 1900 to 1960, show that for three decades up to 1928 (and very likely earlier too) India posted the second highest merchandise export surplus in the world, with USA in the first position. Not only were Indians deprived of every bit of the enormous international purchasing power they had earned over 175 years, even its rupee equivalent was not issued to them since not even the colonial government was credited with any part of India’s net gold and forex earnings against which it could issue rupees. The sleight-of-hand employed, namely ‘paying’ producers out of their own taxes, made India’s export surplus unrequited and constituted a tax-financed drain to the metropolis, as had been correctly pointed out by those highly insightful classical writers, Dadabhai Naoroji and RCDutt.
Surplus budgets to effect such heavy tax-financed transfers had a severe employment–reducing and income-deflating effect: mass consumption was squeezed in order to release export goods. Per capita annual foodgrains absorption in British India declined from 210 kg. during the period 1904-09, to 157 kg. during 1937-41, and to only 137 kg by 1946. If even a part of its enormous foreign earnings had been credited to it and not entirely siphoned off, India could have imported modern technology to build up an industrial structure as Japan was doing. Instead the masses suffered severe nutritional decline and independent India inherited a festering problem of unemployment and poverty.
https://youtu.be/DD0Xr7yWQo8Lisa wrote:Should a senior BJP member ask Indians in the UK NOT to vote for Labour on account of its support for a terrorist nation?
If anyone believes yes, then who and how to bell this cat.
Very polite example,
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brita ... KKCN1UB25W
Gautamji,g.sarkar wrote:Memory lane: When I was in UK back in the 1980s there was a license fee for watching TV. This was meant for the BBC. However, there was resentment among the British Bhadralok that the BBC spent the money for foreign broadcasts meant to emphasize the British point of view (propaganda for the third world countries). By that time the British Empire was toothless and only the BBC thought that it made a difference. They always said that they read the news much slowly and clearly when compared to the VOA, which was done so that the natives could understand it better. VOA that time was a rival organization and had money to throw around, unlike the BBC. Just as the argument went the MI6 did better job than the CIA with less money and more sophistication. James Bond and all that. When you purchased a TV set in UK, it came with forms for payments this license. I took a risk and did not pay. Now, when I lived in West Berlin there was also a fee for watching TV. But they did not enforce this law in student hostels and I did not pay. UK did have private TV (ITN) but BBC did not show commercials and justified the license fee in this way. Germany had commercials but it was on a very limited scale on designated times. Nothing like what we get in the US. If I remember correctly, Germany even today has a fee for using the Internet. I do remember radio licenses in India too. But then I am ancient with a long memory.
Gautam
For this topic please read: India Today by R.Palme Dutt. Published in the 1930s.chetak wrote:England, not only the perfidious albion but also the thieving and larcenous albion.
How the British impoverished India
The queen in 2040?Rsatchi wrote:https://twitter.com/TarekFatah/status/1 ... 81/photo/1
Queens/Kings Guard 2030 courtesy Tarek Fatah
What were these MPs doing when such a disingenuous resolution was passed in the first place? Now that they see a need to placate the Indian community, they have "united"??VinodTK wrote:UK Indian origin MPs unite against Labour Party to withdraw resolution on Kashmir |NewsX
This is hilarious, to say the leastAditya_V wrote:What kind of nation has a TV tax and License, its not really a free nation.
. Let Corbyn first liberate his TV watching public before giving lectures to anyone else about restrictions, freedom, blah, blah. Why would one need a license for something as harmless as sitting at home and watching TV? Defeats the purpose of free-to-air programming.True, except that those days are a small blip in our rear view mirror and mostly forgotten, whereas the UK still seems to be stuck in a time warp. In the 21st century, no less. No wonder they still harbour delusions of grandeur when dealing with their former colonies.saip wrote:May be you may not remember but India used to have Radio licence which has to be renewed every year at the local post office. The inspectors used to look for the antennas (at that time you needed a long wire antenna like the the one you use to dry your clothes except it is made of wire) to fine people. Those were the days when you waited years to buy a little Vespa or go to the local post office to book for the stately Ambassador.
And the gold in Fort Knox, KY that the British robbed India to pay the US for WW II.sudarshan wrote:I'm so glad Jaishankar ji has started quoting the $45 T figure. This needs to be repeated ad-infinitum in any dealings with the UK or British people in general. I'm pretty sure the actual figure is way over $45 T. When you count the starvation, famines, cultural genocide, destruction of local talent (for instance - destruction of Indian calico talent - which used to be the absolute best in the world - and which brought "Manchester Calico" to the fore), constant negative propaganda and peddling of lies against India (opportunity costs), and other such invisibles, the figure could be thrice to four times the quoted value. The UK stole something like a 100 to 200 years of their 1900's GDP from India. That's kept them going for 70 years after 1947. Now that the loot is spent, the UK is unraveling.
But that picture of the queen is haraam!! She's showing the bridge of her nose?? Don't they have a way to cover that up, or are they such sinners that they don't care!?!
NRao wrote: And the gold in Fort Knox, KY that the British robbed India to pay the US fir WW II.
Seriously? I didn't even know that. Will go look it up. I thought the Hope diamond was the biggest thing that the US had from India.Very misleading title and thumbnail. NewsX has pretenses of being a nationalistic channel but does more harm than good to their case with their bombastic exaggerated and misleading crap.VinodTK wrote:
UK Indian origin MPs unite against Labour Party to withdraw resolution on Kashmir |NewsX
NRao-ji, thanks for bringing this topic up, it's something I have always wondered about. Hopefully, some PhD scholar will one day research and publish details on post-war money flows sourced from UK (and by implication, India).sudarshan wrote:NRao wrote: And the gold in Fort Knox, KY that the British robbed India to pay the US fir WW II.
But is this Fort Knox gold included in the $45 T figure?
Not disputing any of that. References, unfortunately, are very hard to come by (understandable, why would thieves refer to themselves as thieves).arshyam wrote:...
Kashi wrote:What were these MPs doing when such a disingenuous resolution was passed in the first place? Now that they see a need to placate the Indian community, they have "united"??VinodTK wrote:UK Indian origin MPs unite against Labour Party to withdraw resolution on Kashmir |NewsX
Dimwits be those who'll fall for this.
It is notable here that the Indian government had reacted strongly to the Labour Party’s resolution and had slammed the move terming it ‘unfounded and uninformed’. The Indian High Commission in London had cancelled the annual Labour Friends of India dinner event on the same day the resolution was tabled at the Labour party’s conference.
India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar had stated that there is no question of engaging any Labour party members on this issue and has added that the Labour party is just pandering its vote bank interests.
Don't open you door, and if you do. Make sure to shut it behind you when speaking to license inspectors.EswarPrakash wrote:I live in the UQ and am SERIOUSLY thinking of cancelling my TV license. I don't watch BBC live or BBC iPlayer anymore. Only watch streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. Most of the TV license goes to BBC and I am no more willing to pay them money to them. I would recommend people take a real look to see if they can avoid paying TV license - legally, of course - especially if you don't watch BBC at all.
So ReichsFuhrera Merkel will achieve what Hitler's Panzer divisions stuck at Dunkirk failed to achieve: annexation of Ireland. Followed by Scotland. Even as the Reich is swallowed by Turkey. Imagine! Sultan Erdogan, Caliph of Irishstan and Scottistan.Brexit has accelerated the possibility of a referendum on Irish unity, which may be the best solution to mitigate the effects of Britain leaving the EU, a new paper on Brussels’ potential role in achieving reunification says.
The inevitability of referendums on both sides of the Irish border means “planning and preparation needs to commence and the EU will be a central part of that,” said Queen’s University Belfast Prof. Colin Harvey at the launch of the paper in the European Parliament on Wednesday, the Irish Times reported.
Speaking with his co-author, barrister Mark Bassett, Harvey said that meetings with representatives from EU member states had shown a broad understanding of the argument that Irish unity might be the best way to deal with the ill-effects of Brexit on the island of Ireland. The alternative, he said, was the “forced removal of Northern Ireland” from the EU “against its will.”
Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by a majority of 56 percent to 44 percent.
Harvey and Bassett’s paper was commissioned by Irish republican party Sinn Féin and its left-wing parliamentary group Gue/NGL.
Harvey said that the EU accepted that Irish reunification would be seen as similar to German reunification in the sense that it would entail the expansion of an existing territory and not a new accession which needed its own accession process, the newspaper reported. The right to self-determination of people was also enshrined in international law, Bassett said.
The Irish government, led by the center-right Fine Gael and propped up by center-right Fianna Fail, has been reluctant to bring up the issue of Irish unity in the context of Brexit, preferring instead to push for Britain to strike a deal with Brussels which averts the need for a hard border to be implemented and maintains the status quo.
UlanBatori wrote:
So ReichsFuhrera Merkel will achieve what Hitler's Panzer divisions stuck at Dunkirk failed to achieve: annexation of Ireland. Followed by Scotland. Even as the Reich is swallowed by Turkey. Imagine! Sultan Erdogan, Caliph of Irishstan and Scottistan.
NRao wrote:And the gold in Fort Knox, KY that the British robbed India to pay the US for WW II.sudarshan wrote:I'm so glad Jaishankar ji has started quoting the $45 T figure. This needs to be repeated ad-infinitum in any dealings with the UK or British people in general. I'm pretty sure the actual figure is way over $45 T. When you count the starvation, famines, cultural genocide, destruction of local talent (for instance - destruction of Indian calico talent - which used to be the absolute best in the world - and which brought "Manchester Calico" to the fore), constant negative propaganda and peddling of lies against India (opportunity costs), and other such invisibles, the figure could be thrice to four times the quoted value. The UK stole something like a 100 to 200 years of their 1900's GDP from India. That's kept them going for 70 years after 1947. Now that the loot is spent, the UK is unraveling.
But that picture of the queen is haraam!! She's showing the bridge of her nose?? Don't they have a way to cover that up, or are they such sinners that they don't care!?!
During WWII, an ammo ship anchored in Mumbai port blew up while dockside operations were going on. Among the things that were scattered were gold bars. Obviously British were not bringing gold into India!!!sudarshan wrote:NRao wrote: And the gold in Fort Knox, KY that the British robbed India to pay the US fir WW II.
But is this Fort Knox gold included in the $45 T figure?
Rsatchi wrote:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 581080.cms
I suppose regardless of the Indian diaspora objecting the Labour feeling is 'U votes don't matter' kind of some BJP commenting on 'Minority votes don't matter to us'
It was this one:ramana wrote:During WWII, an ammo ship anchored in Mumbai port blew up while dockside operations were going on. Among the things that were scattered were gold bars. Obviously British were not bringing gold into India!!!
I think that should be Fuehrerin.UlanBatori wrote: So ReichsFuhrera Merkel will achieve what Hitler's Panzer divisions stuck at Dunkirk failed to achieve: annexation of Ireland. Followed by Scotland. Even as the Reich is swallowed by Turkey. Imagine! Sultan Erdogan, Caliph of Irishstan and Scottistan.