The city must pay: the question of tax

Now local funds had to be raised to implement the ‘improvements’ the city needed to make. Since the government was not going to spend ample land revenue for civic improvement of Lucknow the people had to get used to paying a variety of taxes to finance the benefits planned for it. So far, the citizens of Lucknow had no experience of direct taxation under the nawabs. On the contrary, the city had been supported by funds from the state coffers, which in turn had been replenished annually by the revenue from the countryside.

People were forced to pay tax under intimation, insults and violence. The taxes were heavy and the process of estimating and collecting taxes demonstrated how two other areas of everyday life were drawn into the net of official control: what a man earned and what he owned had not been the king’s business. Mohalla panchayats which had traditionally adjudicated personal and marital disputes among the mohalladars and were responsible for social harmony, were now put in the awkward and unnatural role of ‘informing’ the authorities about the true income and assets of neighbours, friends, and relatives.

The tax-registers and the detailed population census were official documents that put every tradesman, worker, and house owner on record. The very foundations of the social organization of the mohalla, which was the mainstay of the social life for the average citizen seemed to be tampered with by this simple device of asking the panchayats to serve as tax assessors. While the inhabitants of the old city paid the bulk of the taxes, the British inhabitants of the civil lines reaped the bulk of the benefits.