Chapter XIV: Section 3: Causes of Poverty in India

In reality chronic poverty exists both in the thickly-peopled and in the thinly-peopled regions of India, and therefore the overpopulation theory is an inadequate explanation. Moreover, there are certain obvious and admitted evils, sufficient in themselves to account for the chronic poverty of India, and of these four are quoted by Devas. [21]

"(1) The grave discouragement to all rural improvement and in
particular to the sinking of deep wells, by the absence outside Bengal
of fixity of tenure, the landholder having the prospect of his
assessment being raised every fifteen or thirty years. (2) Through most
of India the unchecked oppression of usurers, in whose toils many
millions of landholders are so bound as to lack means or motive for the
proper cultivation of the soil. (3) A system of law and police totally
unfit for small cultivators--witness the plague of litigation, appeals
as 250 to 1 in England, habitual perjury, manufactured crime, and
blackmailing by corrupt native police, all destructive of rural amity,
co-operation, and industry. (4) Taxation oppressive both in quantity
and quality: demanded, on pain of eviction and imprisonment, to be paid
punctually and rigidly in cash, instead of optionally or occasionally
in kind, or flexible, according to the variations of the seasons;
moreover, levied on salt, raising the price of this necessity of life
at least ten times, often much more; when precisely an abundant supply
of salt, with the climate and diet of India, is a prime need for men
and cattle."