According to Asok Mitra, "the abiding contribution of British rule, however, was the establishment of parallel, layered, partly exclusive institutional channels of access to government from the grassroots to the top. These channels were structured into government departments or bureaux, to be manned at all levels by bureaucrats, avowedly to ensure that the equal laws did not degenerate in their dispensing into a hundred unequal laws between the top dog and the underdog. The upper castes all over India were quick to realize the significance of this source of power. There were three means of getting at the levers of power: one education, which qualified a person for jobs; two, jobs at all levels of a bureau and across bureau; and three, which flows from two, authority that man with a job wield over those who depend on his favours. These three layers, in the new context, gave the man at the bureau the means of diversifying and expanding not only his personal and family portfolio, but kinship or caste portfolios as well. The central of the three levers again is the job to which education is the feeder and of which authority is the product. A caste group or individual has power only to the extent it has access or links with jobs at each level of a bureau, which really decides which way the government gravy is going to flow ... A network of jobs consisting of a network of upDer and allied castes can ensure the power of  life and death over a whole host of lesser castes and hold the latter down on their knees for all times. In rural India, this can be easily accomplished by controlling the issue of capital and working loans, inputs of production and raw materials, irrigation and water, on to storage and marketing of agricultural products. This tightens the stranglehold that the upper and middle castes already largely enjoy through the concentration of land, land rights and share of products - the most important means of production in rural India. It is access to and control of the relevant government institution and jobs that gives effective power over all rural activity, production "and distribution and along with the political power. The government job was the thing ... Monopoly of access by the upper castes to education and government jobs can be secured only by denial of access to them by the lower castes." The most formidable weapon that immeasurably added to this controlling power of the upper castes was the conversion of land into a marketable commodity under the new laws. This at one stroke placed all the lower classes defencelessly at the mercy of the upper castes. This applied with particular force in the 'permanently settled' areas of Bihar, Orissa and Bengal. Overnight the upper castes became doubly free and the lower castes doubly slaves." (Source: Mitra A, Census 1951: The Tribes and Castes of W. Bengal, Calcutta, 1953)