Dadabhai Naoroji delivered a paper titled “The Wants and Means of India” at London's Society of Arts in July 1870. He asked the attendees a fundamental question, “Is India currently in a condition to produce enough to supply all its wants?” To answer this, Naoroji began quantifying and explaining India's extreme poverty. For this, he started calculating the country's gross per capita income. His computations were straightforward and difficult to refute.
India's whole produce comes from its land, Naoroji remarked. Working backwards, he took land revenue numbers for 1870-1871. He computed the country's annual gross product to be around £168 million by observing that the government collected roughly one-eighth of total production in land income. Naoroji estimated a final estimate of £200 million after including gross earnings from opium, salt, and forest products and revenue from appropriated land. By dividing this sum by India's population, he arrived at a figure: a pittance of 27 shillings per Indian subject. In comparison, the typical household income in the United Kingdom was over twenty-five times higher, at around £33 per person. Naoroji produced a more conservative estimate of 40 shillings per head in India to account for any industry and manufacturing, which he considered nonexistent.
Thus, in “The Wants and Means of India”, Naoroji pioneered economic comparisons between India and other countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, in the belief that statistics on Indian poverty would astound and shock British citizens and that well-crafted comparisons would make them viscerally uncomfortable. He introduced statistics into politics in this work, making it one of his most valuable contributions.
Source: Indian Culture Portal