1 - Introduction

Summary

Of all the instruction which the servants of the Honourable East India Company have ever brought with them from their parent land to India, that which they derived from the lectures of that truly amiable man Dr Malthus, on Political Economy, has been, perhaps, the most substantially useful to the country. Of the Civil Servants scarcely one can have discharged his duties for many years in any part of India without having often found the welfare and happiness of thousands placed in dependence upon his knowledge of the great principles of this science, and upon that feeling of assurance in the truth of its conclusions which will make him risk his reputation, and all that he holds most dear, in the enforcement of the measures which these conclusions prescribe.

Sir William Sleeman (Officer in the Military and Civil Service of the Honourable East India Company)

ECONOMISTS AND INDIA

It is possible that the influence of economic events on the formation of economic theory has lessened as a consequence of the professionalisation of the discipline of economics in the past hundred years; but it has not disappeared altogether. Whether as explanation of certain economic phenomena or as prescription to cure certain economic ills, economists do take into account the hard realities, not just build theoretical structures. Whoever it may be – from Josiah Child to Joan Robinson – an economist's theoretical writings, reflect at some point the problems faced by contemporary policy makers.