ইওরোপিয় যুক্তি ছিল উপমহাদেশে জমির ওপর ব্যক্তিচাষীর নিয়ন্ত্রণ ছিল না বলেই কৃষির বিকাশ ঘটেনি

তো বাস্তবটা বোঝা যাক। উপমহাদেশের তিনটি গুরুত্বপূর্ন এলাকা বাংলা, গুজরাট এবং দক্ষিণ ভারতের কৃষি উতপাদনের উদ্বৃত্ত বিশ্বের কোথায় কোথায় যেত পড়া যাক

In the eighteenth century, the most economically advanced regions of the subcontinent were unique on the world stage in that they were major producers and exporters not only of manufactured goods, most critically cotton cloth, but also of foodgrain. South India, for instance, was famed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for its painted, printed and patterned cottons from Masulipatnam, Pulicat, Madras and other centers. In the seventeenth century, South India also routinely sent large quantities of rice across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asian emporia such as Malacca, Macassar and Aceh, to Ceylon and around the tip of India to food-deficit areas on the west coast, and even further west to Mocha and Bandar Abbas. In the eighteenth century, rice exports from the south declined, but were still sent periodically to Ceylon and to Southeast Asia. Bengal was famed throughout the world for its silk, fine muslins and other textiles, but was also well known in the Indian Ocean for its cheap rice, which was consumed in grain-deficit areas along both coasts of the subcontinent, Ceylon and Southeast Asia. And Gujarat exported not only cloth to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea in the eighteenth century but also rice, wheat and mung.

The surpluses that Indian agriculture generated suggest that agrarian institutions worked effectively. While the regime of property rights was not identical with that found in Europe, it extended sufficient security and stability for investment and sophisticated systems of production. Political institutions also contributed to the creation and maintenance of this highly productive agrarian order by financing improvement and investment through the institution of taccavi, a process which will be examined in greater detail shortly. Indian agricultural surpluses were also achieved without “sweating” labor, which stands in stark contrast to the general intensification of work in other economically advanced centers of Europe and Asia in the eighteenth century.

প্রসন্নন পার্থসারথীর, হোয়াই ইওরোপ গ্রিউ রিচ... থেকে