The village workers of Bengal in the late 19th century had a monthly income of Rs. 3 on an average while the labourers at Calcutta had an average monthly income of Rs. 5 and that of the "Babus" was Rs. 8 Lord Curzon had himself admitted that the average per capita annual income of the Indians was Rs. 30. However, in 1898, the price of rice was only 75 annas per Kg. But such cheapness of goods should not be associated with the belief there were plenty of vacant jobs available. Narendranath Dutta was one who had to madly search for a clerical job even after passing his B.A. exams. Towards the end of the 19th Century, the number of educated unemployed was increasing in size. The condition of health care was not at all sound in the country. The number of victims of plague in Calcutta was 75 in a single day (on 7th March, 1899). 387 people died of plague in the first three months of the very next year. Besides plague, people were not saved from the clutches of cholera and small pox as well. Moreover they were quite skeptical and apprehensive about small pox vaccination. The consciousness about cholera arose among the British when the manager of a renowned company, Mac Alister Mcniden, who was a British, died of Cholera. As regards malaria, the situation was nothing too different from what it is today. A fact worth mentioning in this Sir Ronald Ross, the Nobel Laureate, was working very hard with his research on malaria and mosquitoes at P.G. Hospital (now SSKM) Hospital) in Calcutta during this period.

The Bengalees have a long tradition of cynically looking at the advent of any new technology. Even as the rickshaw arrived in Calcutta as Late as 1900 and that too with the help of intervention of the Chinese (residing here), the Bengalees acquainted themselves with it after 15 years during the 1st World War period. Identical was the case with electrical fans, trams, motor cars etc. In order to make people believe that electricity is quite safe for houses, it was supplied free of cost to Gagan Tagore's house at Jorasanko.

The cultural aspect of the then Bengali society was quite exciting. The Indian Sangeet Samaj staged the "Punarbasanto" with the maharaja of Darbhanga being the chief guest. The females roles were quite successfully played by the actors. Then Maharaja invited Lord Curzon to watch the play. Later on it was Lord Curzon who turned out to be quite stern against the people associated with stage-theatre when the latter went to greet Curzon on 6th January, 1899 but were denied entry into the government house for being in chappals, wooden sandals etc.

In order that the young boys of Bengal do not go astray seeing the stage actresses, who were held to have tarnished characters, Babu Rajkrishna Roy formed a theatre group comprising of only males. They performed the play "Prahlad" which turned out to be a major success. Charles Walker of Oxford Mission wrote on a similar topic. He warned the top British officials not to send wrong signals to the society after seeing the performances of the stage actresses. The Star Theatre maestro Amritlal Basu countered such an argument by openly challenging Charles Walker - he cited the social recognition of these actresses by the Government in the form of imposition of tax on their income.