24
Extracted from the Dictionary of
PAPAVER
History of British Indian Monopoly.
somniferum.
HISTORY
:Indian.
Necessity for
Government
Agencies
(1797.
Profits of
Opium
credited to
Revenue.
Consumption
of Opium in
India
restricted.
handed proceeding which had come to their notice in which " a considerable
tract of land in the neighbourhood of Ghya was covered with green corn,
and which would have been fit to cut in about a month or six weeks : this
corn was suddenly cut down, in order that the land might be prepared
for the immediate cultivation of poppy." Frequent mention occurs in the
records of the period that the farmers of the opium monopoly insisted that
when once a cultivator had produced opium on a field he must, year after
year, continue to do so. That their vested rights were infringed by a
spasmodic cultivation. That if a rayat did not wish to continue the opium
cultivation, he should forfeit his right to the land and allow the contractors
to find a rayat who would be willing to continue the cultivation. The
instances of abuse in spite of the most stringent injunctions made by the
Company with the contractors became so rife and flagrant, that the Board
of Directors were forced to seek some other plan of operations than that of
farming out the right to produce a drug of such potency. Moreover, the
opening of the contracts to competition compelled the contractors to lower
their prices and to adopt false contrivances to secure their profit. Amongst
others they incited adulteration or themselves directly adulterated the
opium, and thus coming into possession of large quantities that the Company
would not take from them they became retail vendors to an alarming
extent. Year by year the provision opium became worse and worse,
the revenue fell consequence until, in the early part of 1797, it was
decided to abandon the contract system and to open direct Government
agencies.
In 1775, the issue was raised as to whether the profits of the opium traf-
fic shall be credited to Commerce or Revenue. Ultimately, much to the
honour of the great trading Company, the question was decided in favour
of the latter. It thus became all the more necessary that no intermediary
profits should be tolerated, but that the country at large should get the full
benefit of the savings which could be effected by a proper administration
of the Opium Department. The vested interests of the community at
large were thus early recognised as having a direct claim on the proper
control and profits derived from opium. This change was highly com-
mended by Colebrooke (Remarks on Husbandry, E c.), and even Ram
Chand Pundit, who could contrast the old free-trade system, in which he
formerly participated, with the subsequent contract system, after discussing
the grievances of the rayats, amid bribery and corruption, the enforced
cultivation and dishonest weighments of their produce, admitted " If the
grievances above stated, supposing them still to exist, were fairly obviated,
it appears to me that the carrying on the opium business as a monopoly is
the best mode, as well for the rayat as for the preservation of the quality and
the good of the country at large, including the advantage of the Company."
After discussing the many recommendations of the new system, viz., a con-
stant market, liberal advances, freedom from all compulsion to cultivate, he
adds : " The royals should never be let off without punishment whenever
detected either in delivering the juice of the poppy in an adulterated state or
in disposing of it elsewhere ; and finally, after its receipt into the warehouse,
it should be made up with the greatest care, that to whatever region it may
be exported its good quality may redound to the honour of the agent. "
It will thus be seen that the free trade, as also the contract systems, had
been found by the East India Company, as well as by the community at
large, defective and pernicious, and that direct control was hailed by the
enlightened people of India as a greatly needed and valuable reform.
It is to be regretted that definite statistics do not exist of the consumption
of opium in India for more than the past twenty or thirty years. From the
general terms in which it is spoken of, however, by the seventeenth and