Agrarian Inequalities in Colonial UP: The Dufferin Inquiry, 1887–88

In 1873 Dadabhai Naoroji published his tract ‘Poverty of India’, and followed it up ten years later with one titled ‘Condition of India’ (1883).

In these papers, producing an array of official statistics, he showed that India was being impoverished by the ‘Drain of Wealth’ to Britain, and that accordingly its per-capita income, despite its desperately low level, was continuing to fall. These arguments ignited a debate in India and England, which was doubtlessly intensified with the formation of the Indian National Congress in Bombay in 1885. Naoroji himself presided over the second session of the Congress at Calcutta in 1886.