What were the major administrative and economic changes introduced during British governance in India, and how did these changes affect the socio-economic structure of Indian society?
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Big administrative and economic alterations under British rule in India
1. Administrative Modification:
Highly Centralized Government: The British brought about a highly centralized government. The British gained power through the Regulating Act of 1773, the Charter Act of 1833, and the Government of India Act of 1858.
By way of their introduction, Indian Civil Services (ICS) was a government sympathetic to the British Crown that Indians could only sparsely obtain top executive positions.
The codification of laws, including the Indian Penal Code of 1860, which incorporated British legislation brought into India, modernized the legal system but still frequently overlooked the native customs and traditions.
Advanced Infrastructure: Mainly in search of resource extraction and control but resulted in the unaware economic and administrative union of India, they built rails, highways, telegraph lines, and postal services.
Economic evolution:
The Permanent Settlement (Bengal), Ryotwari (South India), and Mahalwari (North India) systems all introduced exploitative taxes, put most of the peasants into debt and deepened great poverty.
Indian handicrafts and traditional industries crashed due to low-cost machine-made imports from Britain, thus leading to economic reliance on agriculture, in turn resulted from deindustrialization.
By promoting cash crops including indigo, cotton, and opium, commercial agriculture helped to cause famines by displacing food crops.
As postulated by Dadabhai Naoroji in his &”Drain of Wealth&” theory, economic policies also offered Britain the tools of depleting India’s riches.
result on Socioeconomic Structure:
Rampant poverty and unemployment grew as a result of the eradication of native industries and high tax rates.
Economic pressures and social dislocations caused complaints that blew up in the Revolt of 1857 among social maladies.
– The rise of the middle class: Westernization also saw India develop a fresh middle class that got politically active and spearheaded the fight for independence.
British infrastructure works and industry drove migrations toward urban areas.
Change in culture: socio-religious reform movements including Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj, which helped society to modernize, arose thanks to English education and exposure to Western ideas.
In India, the difficulties of being exploited as well as the chances resulted from British legal and economic changes had a more profound influence on society run straight. Some of the potential results were political enlightenment and socio-cultural changes.