Read the given text and answer the question based on it. In the countryside peasants and zamindars resented the high taxes and the rigid methods of revenue collection. Many failed to pay back their loans to the moneylenders and gradually lost the lands they had tilled for generations. Were the Indian sepoys in the employ of the company affected by what was happening in the country side? Why/Why not?
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Ruling the Countryside
Our Pasts - III
The Company Becomes the Diwan
On 12 August 1765, Robert Clive, on behalf of East India Company, accepted the Diwani of Bengal from the then Mughal ruler.
The Company became the chief financial administrator of the territory under its control, and so the company had to think and plan the organisation of Bengal in a such a way that it could earn maximum profit out of the territory, profits that could be used to finance their businesses and wars.
As a foreign power, the Company realised that it needed to manage the local rulers in India's villages, because they were respected by the locals and removing them might anger the common people.
Revenue for the Company
Although the Company had become the ruler of Bengal, it continued to work like a trader and did not set up any regular system of assessment and collection. So by 1770, within 5 years of it become the ruler of Bengal, the prices of goods bought by the Company doubled.
This brought great profits for the Company; earlier it had to import precious metals such as gold and silver from Britain to buy goods from India for export to Europe, but after it became the Diwan of Bengal, it started using the revenues from Bengal to buy its goods.
But the economy of Bengal suffered deeply. Peasants were unable to pay the dues, and artisanal production fell because the Company bought the artisans' goods at low prices by force. As a result of such exploitative practices and high prices, there was a famine in Bengal in 1770 that killed 10 million people, a third of Bengal's population.