Land Revenue System

The Land Revenue System was introduced by the Britishers during their colonisation period before the independence of India. Since the time of Mughal rulers’ dominance in India, Emperors and kings believed in dividing the lands into jagirs. Jagirdars, like an owner, control jagirs. 

The jagirdars then divide the land into further sections and sell it to fellow sub-ordinate zamindars. Zamindars forced peasants to farm in the ground in exchange for a portion of their earnings as a levy. For Britishers in India, the revenue from land and farming was one of the major pathways of income. During the British reign in India, there were particularly three types of land revenue systems policies taking place. 

Land Revenue System In India By Britishers

There were three basic types of land ownership in use in the country before independence:

The Zamindari System is a system that allows people to communicate with each other

The Mahalwari System is a system that was developed by the Mahalwari

The Ryotwari System is a system that was developed in Japan.

The main distinction between both systems was how the land revenue was paid.

The Zamindari System

Lord Cornwallis initiated the urgent implication of the zamindari system in 1793 through the Permanent Settlement Agreement, which guaranteed the members’ land rights in eternity without any mechanism for set rent or occupancy rights for actual cultivators.

The land revenue was acquired from the farmers by Zamindars, who acted as middlemen in the Zamindari system. The government’s share of total land money raised by the zamindars was retained at 10%, with the rest going to the zamindars.

The Permanent Settlement Agreement

The Zamindars were acknowledged as the permanent landowners under the Permanent Land Revenue Settlement. They were told to pay the state 88% of their annual revenue while keeping 12% for themselves. The Zamindars were given autonomy over the domestic matters of their regions.

Issues in the Zamindari System

• In villages, the cultivators regarded the system as restrictive and exploitative because the zamindar’s right to the land was unstable, and the rent they paid to him was very high. Cultivators were frequently forced to take out loans to pay their rents, and if they did not pay, they were evicted from their land
• The revenue had been set at such a high level that zamindars found it very hard to repay, and those who did not pay lost their zamindari. The zamindars had little desire to improve the land. They would like to rent the land instead of selling it

The Ryotwari System

There was a shift away from the notion of Permanent Settlement in British possessions in India. Land revenue was paid directly to the government by farmers under the Ryotwari system. In this system, a single cultivator known as Ryot held complete control over the land sale, transfer, and lease.

As long as the ryots maintained their rent, they could not be expelled from their land.

The elimination of intermediaries, who often oppressed locals, was one of the system’s benefits.

Issues in the Ryotwari System

• Subordinate revenue officers were given a lot of power under this arrangement, and their operations were poorly controlled.
• The Mahajan and moneylenders, who offered loans to peasants by taking out a mortgage on their land, dominated the system. Moneylenders preyed on the cultivators, evicting them from their land if they defaulted on their loans.

The Mahalwari System

By the early nineteenth century, company authorities were determined that the revenue structure needed to be modified once more. The income could not be fixed indefinitely at a time the company required more money to cover its administrative and trading costs.

In the Western Provinces in the Bengal Council, Englishman Holt Mackenzie established a new method known as the Mahalwari System in 1822. The land revenue was taken from the peasants by the village chiefs on behalf of the entire village under the Mahalwari system.

The entire community was called ‘Mahal’ and are declared as a single unit for the purpose of accumulating land revenue sources. Lord William Bentick popularised the method in Agra and Awadh, and it was later expanded to Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.

Issues in the Mahalwari System

• One of the system’s fundamental flaws was that the study was founded on diverse assumptions, which allowed room for emotional manipulation and illegal corruption
• It caused the officials to dedicate more to collecting than its revenue at times. As a result, the system has been deemed a failure

Other Land Revenue Systems

• Taluqdari System: – In different places of India, the word ‘taluqdar’ has distinct connotations. Taluqdar is a powerful landowner in Oudh. These were developed partly as a zamindari management technique and in the claim as a fiscal policy mechanism to raise zamindari revenues for specified uses
• Malguzari System: – Under the Maratha empire, the land revenue system in the former Central Provinces was called the Malguzari system, wherein the Malguzar was simply a revenue farmer. When the Marathas took authority in this region, they distributed village revenues to influential and wealthy people known as Malguzars

Conclusion

Officials had hoped that the new structure would turn peasants into wealthy, ambitious farmers, but this did not occur. Revenue officials, motivated by a desire to enhance land revenues, set an excessively high revenue demand, which peasants could not meet. As a result, the Ryots abandoned the land, and many settlements became empty. The land revenue system in India was flourishing because of the greed of power in Britishers.