This increasing pressure on agriculture was one of the major causes of the extreme poverty of India under the British rule. In the very beginning of British rule in Bengal, the policy of Clive and Warren Hastings of extracting the largest possible land revenue had led to such devastation that even Cornwallis complained that one-third of Bengal had been transformed into 'a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts.' Nort did improvement occur later. In both the permanently and the temporarily settled Zamindari areas, the lot of the peasants remained unenviable. The Indian peasant hardly had any savings for critical times and whenever crops failed he fell back upon the money lender not only to pay land revenue but also to feed himself and his family. By the end of the 19th century, the money-lender had become a major curse of the countryside and an important cause of the growing poverty of the rural people. In 1911 the total rural debt was estimated at Rs. 300 crores. By 1937 it amounted to Rs. 1800 crores. The book will immensely help students, researchers, policymakers, government officials, parliamentarians and all other concerned with this subject. To those who wish to know about various aspects of this topic, it will provide for richly rewarding reading.