Legend has it that during the period when the English occupied India, the country was richer and the standard of living of its middle class was comparable to that of the Europeans, and that the Indians lived a lavish life despite being under tutelage.
But that's probably not the case:a new report by economist Utcha Patnaik, just published by Columbia University Press, estimates that Britain drained India from 1765 to 1938 of 45 trillion dollars. An astronomical amount, which is 17 times more than the total GDP of today's Britain.
How was this possible? Apparently through the trading system. Before the colonial period, Britain bought goods such as cloth and rice from Indian producers and paid them money. When after 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the region and established a monopoly on trade from the Indies, things changed.
The Company began to levy taxes in India and then with that money bought Indian goods for British use. That is, instead of paying out of pocket for Indian goods, British merchants obtained them for free, "buying" from Indian farmers and textile workers with money they had just taken from them.
Patnaik did various calculations and roughly measured how much the British owe the Indians (with a minimum interest rate of 5%) and discovered that these sums amount to 44.6 trillion. dollars. An amount that led the American economist to the conclusion that "it is not true that Britain brought development to India:it is rather India that brought development to Britain".
SOURCE:APE-ME