Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Meera is preparing a school project on the state of India’s economy at the time of Independence. Her teacher gives her old census reports and asks her to find out how India’s population and income changed during British rule. Meera finds a census report for every ten years, starting from the late nineteenth century. When she looks for figures of the country’s national income for the same years, she finds very little that she can use.
Meera could not find any reliable official figures of India’s national income for the colonial period. Which of the following correctly explains this and names the estimator whose figures for that period are considered very significant?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The colonial government never made any sincere attempt to estimate national income; V.K.R.V. Rao
Two facts decide this. The colonial government never made any sincere attempt to estimate India’s national income, so there were no official figures. Only individuals made estimates, and their results conflicted.
Among those individuals, V.K.R.V. Rao’s estimates are considered very significant. Dadabhai Naoroji was another estimator.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.2 Low Level of Economic Development Under the Colonial Rule The economic policies pursued by the colonial government in India were concerned more with the protection and promotion of the economic interests of their home country than with the development of the Indian economy. Such policies brought about a fundamental change in the structure of the Indian economy — transforming the country into supplier of raw materials and consumer of finished industrial products from Britain. Obviously, the colonial government never made any sincere attempt to estimate India’s national and per capita income. Some individual attempts which were made to measure such incomes yielded conflicting and inconsistent results. Among the notable estimators — Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, Findlay Shirras, V.K.R.V. Rao and R.C. Desai — it was Rao, whose estimates during the colonial period was considered very significant. …” |