UPSC 2013 CDS 1 English Paper

Many poor farmers had been compelled to take up indigo cultivation when the British settlers were given the right to purchase and cultivate land in India. Many whites, therefore, either acquired land or advanced loans to poor farmers and pressurised them to forsake the farming of food-grains and other cash crops for indigo cultivation. Indigo export to Europe was lucrative for the British settlers who held a monopoly of this business. Within a few years, most of the fertile lands had undergone forcible indigo cultivation, resulting in a famine situation in Bengal. When the farmers declined to cultivate indigo, they were tortured, jailed and even killed.