ABSTRACT
The most important elements in the pre-British economic pattern were the self-sufficient villages in which the vast majority of the people lived and which, unless they happened to be centres for the export of luxury goods, were almost solely insulated from the economics of the outside world. Economic life was thus essentially static, and, as Radha Kamal Mukerjee writes of backward villages, even to this day ‘there is no desire for a better or comfortable living, both among the cultivators as well as among the artisans. The Indian upper middle classes who for a century have shaped India’s political and economic thought and who today rule India are indeed the most evident sign of the changes wrought by the British in the economic pattern of India. The next most important economic effect of British rule has been the remarkable increase in productive capacity, both agricultural and industrial.
