Eastern Bengal and Assam Eastern Bengal and Assam Eastern Bengal and Assam was an administrative subdivision (province) of the British Raj between 1905 and 1912. Headquartered in the city of Dacca, it covered territories in what are now Bangladesh, Northeast India and Northern West Bengal. As early as 1868, British administrators saw the need for an independent administration in the eastern portion of the Bengal Presidency. They felt that Fort William in Calcutta, the capital of British India, was already overburdened. By 1903, it dawned on the colonial government on the necesscity of partitioning Bengal and creating prospects for Assam's commercial expansion. The British
Economy of West Bengal 33% of the potato yield in 2004, despite accounting for only 7.55% of the population of India. The state's total financial debt stood at . Agriculture accounts for the largest share of the labour force. It contributed around 18.7% to the gross state domestic product (GSDP) in 2009–10. A plurality of the state's population are peasant farmers. Rice and potato are considered to be the principal food crops of West Bengal. West Bengal is the largest producer of rice in India with an annual output of around 16.1 million tonnes in FY 2015-16, and the second-largest producer of potatoes in