In this article we will discuss about:- 1. Meaning of Land Tenure 2. Land Tenure System in Hindu and Muslim Period 3. Land Tenure System under British Rule 4. Three Systems of Land Tenures on Eve of Independence.
Meaning of Land Tenure:
Agricultural productivity in India has been low not only because the peasant producer is impoverished and disease-ridden but also because the investible surplus is most frittered away in non-productive consumption. Both these facts are intimately related to the institutional factors, viz., who owns the land? how land is used? and for whom does the tiller of the soil produce ? for himself, for the land-lord, for the market or for the community ?
Till recently the agrarian system in India was a powerful obstacle to economic development and higher agricultural production. In this connection the observation of U.N.O. needs consideration. It says that, “in the first place, the tenant has little incentive to increase his output since a large share in any such increase will accrue to the landowner, who has incurred no part of its cost. Secondly, the high share of the produce taken by landowner may leave the peasant with a bare minimum subsistence with no margin for investment. Thirdly, it means that wealth is held in the form of land that accumulation of capital does not lead to productive investment………. In such conditions it is important to emphasise that the existence of large-scale property ownership does not secure any of the advantages of large-scale operation or investment. The tenants secure no benefit of working with better equipment or with better seeds, their methods of work are the same as the small owner.”
There are two problems deserving consideration, viz., the problem of land tenure i.e., the legal or customary system under which land is owned, and the problem of land tenancy i.e., the system under which land is actually cultivated and the product divided between the owner and the cultivator. In a study of the systems of land tenure, are discussed the questions of landownership, sale or mortgage of land and how far these rights are recognised by law or custom while under land tenancy are studied the questions of security under which the cultivator holds land and of the division of the product.
The ‘tenurial system’ identifies the ownership of land and the relationship of the owner with the cultivator. In other words the system of ‘land tenure’ refers to the system of ownership of land and the terms and conditions under which land is leased to the tiller by the landlord.
According to Raleigh Barlowe; “land tenure concerns all of the ways in which people, corporate bodies and governments share in the bundle of property rights; and it concerns also the time periods during which these rights are held”. Thus land tenure refers to the pattern of rights and responsibilities under which people hold, occupy and use landed property. The system encompasses such things as the owner, the cultivator, and the government, interrelation among them and the rights and obligations of each.
Land Tenure System in Hindu and Muslim Period:
Eminent authorities like Baden Powell and Dr. Mukerjee maintain that private property and peasant proprietorship existed in India even in the Vedic period. There are others who maintain that land was the property of the king, i.e., of the State. Manusmriti maintains that “land is the property of him who cut away the wood or who tilled and seared it”. But Yajnavalkya says that “land belongs to the king and the tiller possesses only the usufructuary rights for life.” In the Arthashastra it is maintained that “land may be confiscated from those who do not cultivate it and given to others- or it may be cultivated by village labourers and traders, lest those owners who do not cultivate it might pay less.”
And further, “land prepared for cultivation shall be given to tax-payers only for life.” In Jaimini’s view (Purva Mirnansa) “the king cannot give away the earth because it is not his exclusive property but is common to all beings enjoying the fruits of their own labour in it.” This indicates that state ownership was not totally absent, but limited by or combined with common ownership of the village.
Prof. Mukerjee gives the following picture of land tenure existing in ancient India prior to the Muslim period:
“There was the king having no property right in land except the right to a share of the produce. Below the king were the cultivators (khud-kasht-owner, cultivator-raiyats or members of joint village community), having the actual ownership of land. The king’s customary share was equal to 1/6th to 1/4th of the produce, which was known as customary pargana rate.”
The demand of the State varied automatically with the outturn, and no elaborate system of suspensions and remissions of the revenue was thought necessary. The State had merely a right to a share always in kind. But tills proved disadvantageous from the point of view of the cultivators as the whole crop had to be kept rotting on the ground till the officers of the king came to supervise the division.
Hence, this inconvenience gave place eventually to the payment in money. In the Muslim period, there was revival of trade and expansion of money economy Commutation of produce-rent increased the economic powers of rent collectors and revenue farmers.
Muslim Period:
As distinguished from the earlier system land revenues were collected not by officials of the State but by local chiefs or lieges with whom settlements were made by the Central State authorities. This system was extended and regularised under the Muslim rule. The chief or lieges—subedars, nawabs, and princes, in their turn made settlements with the lower lieges who also too often became independent rulers.
During the Muslim rule, the assessment of land revenue was more systematised and standardised. The process was initiated under Sher Shah and perfected under Emperor Akbar. During the latter’s reign, 1/3, of the 10 years’ average produce was fixed as the state revenue payable in cash. This method of assessment was applied in case of land which was in continuous cultivation.
But in the case of land which, on occasions, remained fallow, full rent was collected only in the year of cultivation and no rent was levied during the fallow period. In the case of land out of cultivation for 5 years, a reduced rate was charged to encourage cultivation.
According to Prof. Mukerjee, “during the Mughal period:
(i) Zamindari (i.e., the state right) developed into kings’ superior ownership of the entire domain, but the concurrent hereditary, permanent and long established right of the khud-kasht raiyats in the soil was recognised;
(ii) Old chieftains remained who collected and transmitted local revenues to the ruler; and
(iii) Zamindars and jagirdars came into existence between the state and khud-kasht raiyats.”
The right of collecting land revenue for a pargana or district was sold out by public auction to the highest bidders who were held responsible for the payment of the amount, thus, fixed in one lump sum into the government treasury, retaining for themselves any surplus over it. These tax-farmers squeezed out of the cultivators as much as possible and paid to the Government as little as they could. In some cases, the Hindu chieftains or rajahs subdued by the Mughals were made the revenue farmers under the Imperial Warrant.
Although at first the office of the tax-farmer was not hereditary and was subject to the supervision of the state officials, it tended to be so as the control of the central authority weakened. Thus, by the middle of the 17th century zamindars, assignee and farmers of land taxes had greatly strengthened their position. They consolidated their positions by bringing waste land under cultivation as their own land by buying up the small farmers.
It may be noted that the system that had developed under the Mughal emperors had the following characteristics:
(i) Land belonged to the peasant, in the sense, that he enjoyed hereditary occupancy right if he was a resident of the village. Even his rent could not be increased by the zamindar beyond the customary level (nirikh).
(ii) Land could neither be purchased nor sold. Generally the peasant was not evicted- even if he was evicted for failure to cultivate, land was not to be resumed as the khas land of zamindar, but another peasant had to be invested with its occupancy right.
(iii) The zamindars whose tributes to the ruler were fixed, were themselves petty rulers and had to fulfil the traditional duties of a ruler for the betterment of agricultural operations.
Land Tenure System under British Rule:
When the East India Company acquired political control in one part of the country after another they took over the traditional system; but the whole character of land system was transformed by them through the introduction of the British concepts in India. It was assumed that the State was the supreme landlord. In the place of the traditional share of the Government in the produce, paid by the village communities as a whole there was introduced a system of fixed payments in cash assessed on land which had no reference to the good or bad harvest.
In most cases the assessment was individual whether levied directly on the cultivator or on landlords appointed by the State. In 1793, Lord Cornwallis gave the revenue farmers the proprietary rights over their estates in return for their agreeing to pay a fixed amount as land revenue to the British. The result of this agreement was that the zamindars who were merely collectors of land revenue were converted into landlords and original cultivators were reduced to the position of tenants.
Thus, between the cultivating holder and the Government a third party with an interest in laud had grown up in zamindari areas. In most parts of Bengal sub- infeudation had been created. When the estate was too big the zamindar would hand over a part of it on lease to a tenure holder.
In such adjustment there have been four interests in land which may intervene between the cultivator and the government, as will be clear from the table given by Baden Powell:
The land revenue was considered as a rent rather than a tax. Under British rule, the system of assessment and collection of revenue varied according to the varying circumstances of different States and to suit administrative convenience. So that “the system of land tenure in India exhibited almost every conceivable variation from immense estates containing thousands of tenants to minute holdings of well under an acre in size.”
In India it had been a long practice for the rulers to make grants of villages to their dependents and the grantee was entitled to the State’s share of the produce. But the grantees by bringing wasteland under the plough, and by buying up poorer land, holders claimed to be the landlords of the whole village and in course of years succeeded in making the cultivators forget that they had independent rights.
So that the descendants of the grantees held the village jointly while the cultivating landholders had sunk to the position of the tenants with some special occupancy privileges. Above these joint villages another right had grown up in U.P. In Agra the Rajahs, who had been employed as revenue farmers by the kingdom, had acquired certain rights over a number of such villages by the time the Province came under British rule.
In these cases the village owners had been recognised by the British Government as actual proprietors and the land revenue settlement had been made with them but a sort of overlordship or talukdari interest over them had been assigned to the talukdars who were paid 10 per cent of the land revenue raised from the villages as talukdari allowance. The talukdars of Oudh also originated in this way.
Thus in India, over the right to land which was created by first clearance, a number of other rights had grown up—rights which originate in conquest, grant of natural superiority, Enterprising revenue farmers and State officials had risen and ruling chiefs had sunk to the position of landlords.
Rights of this kind (inheritance right) resided either in one landlord or in a body of co-sharers having overlordship over a village or a large estate. To quote Baden Powell, “claims grew, one set of rights were superimposed upon another and in many cases—as zamindari areas of Bengal and in the talukdari estates of Oudh—various grades of rights in land were found to co-exist.”
Three Systems of Land Tenures on Eve of Independence:
“The system of land tenure in India exhibited almost every conceivable variation from immense estates, containing thousands of tenants to minute holdings or well under an acre in size. It is nevertheless possible to classify the holdings into certain fairly well-defined groups.”
There were three main types of land tenures; such as:
(a) Landlord tenure, which was called zamindari system.
(b) Independent single tenure which was described as raiyatwari system.
(c) Joint-village or village community tenure which was known as mahalwari system.
This classification was based on the relationship between the holder and the Government. The type of tenure in each case determined form of settlement of the land revenue, the gradations of interest and rights in land, their recognition and inter-relation and the nature of the unit of assessment adopted.
From the point of view of duration, there were two types of tenures, viz., permanently settled estate system, known as permanent zamindari and temporarily settled estate system, called temporary zamindari.
The following chart reveals the distribution of three principal land tenures established under the British rule:
Of the total area under three main types of land revenue, 38 per cent belonged to raiyatwari, 24 per cent to permanent settlement and 38 per cent to temporary settlement at the time of Independence.
It may be noted that the period of temporary settlement varied from 30 years in Bombay, Madras and U.P. to 20 years in Central Provinces and 40 years in Punjab.
Marx has described the main characters of three types of land tenure in India as follows-“The history of English in India is a string of futile and really absurd economic experiments. In Bengal, they created a caricature of large-scale English landed estates- in South-Eastern India a caricature of small parceled property, in the north-west they did all they could to transform the India economic community with common ownership of the soil into a caricature of itself.”
This system was first introduced in the districts of Baramahal (Madras) by Captain Read and Thomas Munro in 1792 and was gradually extended to other parts of the province and thereafter to Bombay, Berar and Central India. Later on the system was extended to Mysore, Assam and Hyderabad. Although originally the raiyat was the actual cultivator, there were many non-cultivating or absentee raiyats.
The ryotwari tenure is characterised by the following principal features:
(a) Under this system, the raiyat or the registered holder of the land is recognised as holding the land directly from the government without the intervention of any intermediaries. His tenure is known as the occupancy tenure but the ownership of all land including the waste land lies in the state.
(b) The holder of the land is a mere occupant and as such has the right to use, transfer by gift, sell, or sub-let or mortgage or otherwise dispose of the land. He holds the land in perpetuity so long as he pays the land revenue to the state. Hence, he cannot be ejected by the Government so long as he pays the fixed assessment.
(c) The occupant has a right to resign any field or fields at his option. He can, thus, contract the area held by him by resignation or extend it by purchase in accordance with the state of his resources.
(d) The occupant can lease a portion or the whole of his holding on annual tenancy at a rent agreed upon with the tenant. The tenant under the raiyat has no statutory rights. He has no permanent interest in the land he cultivates. If the tenant sows improved seeds or puts in good manure or extra labour to improve the land he has no guarantee that he will get an extra return for his labour and enterprise.
The absentee raiyat cares only for the rent and takes no interest in the improvement of the land. Under this system the tenants are called tenants-at-will or non-occupancy tenants raiyat, they have to work as terms and conditions laid down in the lease by the owners.
(e) If the Government sells the holding of the raiyat for areas of land revenue and takavi loans the purchaser has a clean title, the sale conveying the land free of all encumbrances.
(f) The assessment is a charge upon the crop and the arrears of previous years, a first charge on the holding. The revenue is regarded as a rent and not as a tax. Every holder is individually responsible for payment of the land revenue. The assessment is fixed for a period of 20 to 30 years and is periodically revised under a survey settlement.
Raiyatwari system is based on Arthur Younges’ view that “the magic of property turns into gold.” Raiyatwari system is to be found largely in Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
The main advantages claimed for this system are:
(i) That there is no sub-infeudation and the cultivator is in direct relation with the government,
(ii) There are no intermediaries,
(iii) The raiyat is at liberty to sub-let his land and can enjoy a permanent right of tenancy so long he pays the land revenue.
But this system suffers from certain defects too:
(i) The land in these areas passes into the hands of non-agriculturists and the number of the landless labourers is increasing, and the size of holdings going smaller and smaller.
(ii) It is also defective in the methods of assessment of land revenue. It leaves too much to the Settlement Officer whose estimates are based on mere guess-work.
(iii) The individual assessment has destroyed the collective basis of village life and has led to the decay of the village community.
Although raiyatwari tenure vested proprietary rights on the peasants, this proprietorship was very soon lost to the same elements who had become zamindars in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The money lenders were very prominent in this respect in the raiyatwari areas.
As a result a new class of landlord began to rise in these areas dispossessing the actual tillers of the soil of their proprietorship, as would be clear from the quotation given below:
“The tenant who cultivated land on lease, which is generally annual, is not sure how long the land would remain in his possession as the landlord has the power to resume that land after the end of the year giving three months’ notice to the tenant. Thus the tenant has no permanent interest in lands. In many cases, land is leased on the crop-sharing basis. If the tenant sows improved seeds or puts in good manure or extra labour to improve the land, half of the increased production so obtained at his cost goes to the landlord, the tenant does not get a proper return on his labour and enterprise. The absentee landlord cares only for his annual rent and takes no interest in the improvement of his land or the introduction of improved methods of cultivation.”
The Congress Agrarian Committee has defined this system in these words- “The principle of mahalwari or joint village system, first adopted in Agra and Oudh and later extended to the Punjab were laid down in Regulation IX of 1833. Under this system, the villages concerned were units by themselves and the ownership of property was joint or communal. These villages or mahals were settled with directly, though a co-sharer of standing was generally selected to undertake the primary liability of paying the land revenue. Under this system, the details regarding procedural period of settlement and assessment of land revenue vary from place to place.”
John Stuart Mill described it thus- “The peasant proprietor’s compound with the State for a fixed period. The proprietors do no engage individually with the government but by village, through its headman, undertakes to pay so much for so many years themselves assigning to each man his quota. Primarily each man cultivates and pays for himself but ultimately he is responsible for his co-villagers and they for him; they are ultimately bound together by a joint responsibility. If one of them is compelled to sell his rights to meet demands upon him, the others have the right for pre-emption.”
In the ancestral villages, each co-sharer paid a proportion of the land revenue exactly corresponding to the fractional share of the estate; while in the non-ancestral villages the amount each sharer was to pay was proportionate to the actual holding. Such tenure prevailed in the Punjab and U.P.
Whether these co-sharers themselves cultivated the land, or they had below them a class of tenants, depends upon the way in which the joint village has originated. If the body of the co-sharers (as in U.P.) has grown up over an already existing village, the original cultivators would have sunk to the level of the tenant paying rent to the co-sharers who divide the amount so collected among themselves. If the proprietary body belonged to a superior of a military class as in the Punjab and U.P. the cultivation was carried on by the tenant and not by the co-sharers.
But when the village has been established on a new soil by a co-operative colonizing group or by an active and energetic conquering tribe whole descendants were the joint owners of the village the co-sharers may themselves work on the land with the help of their families. But here also tenants may be found.
In a joint village the village common or Shamlat and the wasteland belonged to the co-sharers and not the government. The co-sharers may let it out on rent to tenant and divided the rent among themselves and brought it under cultivation. Each co-sharing body has its own special holding or home farm better known as Sir land.
It was the private property of the co-sharing landowner and no one could claim to have been its owner in the past. We hear less of Sir land in the Punjab because there the co-sharers themselves cultivate the land, and usually there are no tenants who hold from them. The Sir land was important in U.P. and M.P.
The co-sharing families in the joint village shared the land or its yield according to one of the three principles:
(i) The first was the ancestral or family share system. Each of the co-sharing families got a fraction of the whole, determined by its place in the genealogical tree.
Among these ancestral villages themselves, there were three distinct varieties:
(a) The present body of the joint owners might hold the whole estate undivided (as in the case of a joint undivided family), viz., zamindari mustarkas;
(b) Or the co-sharing families might agree to partition the estate among themselves on the ancestral principle, viz., pattidari;
(c) Or the co-sharers might divide only part of the estate, leaving the wasteland the area cultivated by the occupancy tenants undivided, viz., imperfect pattidari. In the case of joint villages held on the ancestral system, the present body of proprietors are descendants of a common ancestor who acquired landlord rights over the estate.
(ii) The second system was adopted in the non-ancestral villages which had been established by colonisation of conquering groups, and villages which had forgotten all remembrances of ancestral shares.
Here the land was shared by the co-sharers according to customary or bhaichara principles in- (a) equal lots made up artificially of various types of land (from good and bad land in the village); or (b) according to the number of ploughs owned; or (c) with reference to share in water; or (d) share in well.
(iii) There was a system of de facto holdings. In villages which followed this principle there was no sharing. Nothing but de facto holding was recognised. This may be due to the fact that originally when the village was established land was abundant and each family took what it wanted or had the ability to cultivate or to the gradual decay of an earlier system of definite shares.
For revenue, one sum was assessed for the whole village for which all the co-sharers were jointly and severally responsible. The revenue was collected by the village numberdar, for which he was given a commission of 5 per cent.
This system was mainly the result of the reluctance of the British, during the early days of their rule in India, to deal directly with the cultivating holders for the collection of land revenue. When parts of India gradually began to pass under British rule, the British administrators were faced with the problem of making arrangements for the collection of land revenue.
Numerous factors made them prefer dealing with the raiyats through middlemen. Firstly, the task of surveying and assessing the small holdings of millions of cultivators, and of collecting the land revenue from them was a gigantic and formidable one. Secondly, the complex administrative machinery needed for this purpose had not been built up till then. Combined with this natural disinclination to deal directly with the raiyats was the idea of landlord and tenant to which they had been accustomed in England, and they therefore proceeded on the basis that the cultivators must hold their lands from the landlord.
This made them extremely willing to recognise one person as the landlord of an estate and thus make him responsible for the payment of land revenue levied on the estate as a whole. The Britishers were anxious to find suitable persons, i.e., the zamindars and the various revenue or tax farmers or revenue collecting officers of the mughals, who were though in reality the landholders and not the proprietors having any proprietary rights in the soil, but had strengthened their position during the disturbed days that followed the break-up of the Mughal empire and now claimed to be landlords, came in very handy.
The British recognised them as landlords and they, in turn, agreed to pay a stipulated amount as land revenue on their estates. Thus according to Sir Richard Temple, “the Permanent Settlement in Bengal was a measure which was effected to naturalise the landed institutions of England among the natives of Bengal.”
The zamindars who were originally either the local chiefs,’ rajahs or other grantees or the agents of government and therefore, under the supervision of the government were declared full proprietors of the areas over which their revenue collection extended. The assessment was fixed at about 10/11 ths of what the zamindar received as rent from raiyats the balance of 1/11 ths constituting the zamindar’s remuneration.
The revenue liability was fixed in a rough and ready manner without any survey of landed rights, and interests or any investigation into the productive capacity of the different classes of soils. The intention of protecting the tenants as well was never made effective. The landlords became a functionless parasitic class interested in getting the maximum rent from the peasants and Cornwallis dream of creating in Bengal a beneficent landlord capitalist system resting on the contentment of the cultivator failed to materialise.
In thus, hastily recognising the claims of zamindars and other revenue farmers to proprietary rights, the Britishers sacrificed the interests of the millions of cultivating raiyats. Those who were the real proprietors of the land they cultivated now sank to the position of tenants holding their land from the zamindar. The inevitable result was the creation of absentee landlords and degradation of the original holders to a position of semi-serfdom, e.g., in U.P. the creation of talukdars in Avadh after the war of Independence (1857) was dictated by the political necessity irrespective of the rights of the mass of peasantry.
Dr. B.R. Misra has remarked that “Government entirely for political considerations, subordinated and sacrificed the interests of the millions to the interests of the few.” This resulted in the creation of landlordism, the conversion of occupants into full-proprietors, and under-proprietors, and the emphasis on the distinction between the superior proprietors and under-proprietors which have been responsible for the deterioration of the economic position of the raiyats and for the growth of a class of capitalistic rent-receiving intermediaries.
All these landlord estates fell into two broad classes, viz.:
(1) Permanently settled
(2) Temporarily settled
(1) Permanent Settlement
The Permanent Settlement was introduced in Bengal by Lord Cornwallis in 1793. The system was later extended to other parts of the country as the Directors of the E.I. Co., were favourably impressed by this system. It was, therefore, applied to Banaras, to north Madras, to U.P., and parts of South Madras. In 1885 this system was formally abandoned as the state could not enhance its land revenue.
The permanent settlement had three main features- Firstly, it gave the zamindar proprietary rights in the soil, subject to his paying regularly the land revenue due from the estate. Secondly, in order to encourage the landlords to invest money in the improvement of their estates it fixed the State demand in perpetuity.
Thirdly, if the land revenue due from the zamindar was fixed at a lump sum (10/11 ths) this assessment was declared fixed and unalterable. The State sacrificed its right to enhance the land revenue due from the estates under the zamindars in order to induce them to spend capital on the development of their estates and to encourage the expansion of cultivation.
Result of Permanent Revenue Settlement:
(1) It Failed to Define and Protect the Rights of the Raiyats:
The permanent settlement had disastrous results for the cultivating raiyats. At the time of the Permanent Settlement the Khudkasht ryot had real proprietary rights in the soil; the land revenue which they paid to the zamindars was regulated by customary rates (known as pragana rates) and they could not be ejected so long as they paid those customary rates.
They had also “a number of communal privileges in regard to homestead plots and to the pasture and forest lands, bunds, tanks, irrigation channels and fisheries to the services of the village servants or officials, and to the pick of fields left unoccupied.” The permanent settlement, while it gave zamindars the proprietary rights in the soil, left undefined the customary rights of the raiyats. The result was to place the raiyats entirely at the mercy of the zamindars, who gradually secured the right to enhance the amounts due as land revenue from the ryots and to evict them.
Further, no attention was paid to the rights of the heritability and transferability of the holdings enjoyed by the raiyats. The tenants suffered doubly, first, by losing their proprietary rights in the lands they held, and secondly, by the lack of provision for an appeal to a higher authority for the redress of their grievances.
In the period between 1793 and 1859, the ryots were left to the mercy of the zamindars and the rights were completely effaced. “Within a few decades not merely were the customary rates all broken up, district by district, but the rights of the raiyats were so completely obliterated that… it was difficult to find a single vestige or ascertain what they were when the first tenancy legislation was being considered.”
In fact, in the interval of 66 years while the proprietary body grew in strength and prospered in wealth, village communities perished, the pargana rates disappeared, and most vestiges of the constitutional claims of the peasantry was lost in the usurpations and encroachments of the landlords. So says Dr. R.K. Mukerjee that, “the landlords encroached upon the restricted rights in the village commons, and displayed little practical interest in the improvement of the condition of the tenants as they were merely concerned with exacting as much revenue as possible from the raiyats.”
Further, the landlord magnates whether the zamindars of Bengal or the talukdars of Avadh or large landowners of the canal colonies in the Punjab, had neglected their duties towards the raiyats, done very little towards the improvement of the land and contributed by their indifference and neglect to the growing impoverishment of the agricultural classes.
(2) It Led to Sub Division of Rights in Land:
The zamindar leased out their interests, and the middlemen leased out in turn, creating a long chain of rent receivers and rent payers who intervened between the State and the actual cultivators. This feudalism on the one hand and serfdom on the other, were the principal characteristics of the land system of Bengal.
Owing to the practice of sub-letting. 30% of the land is Bombay- and Madras was not cultivated by the tenants themselves. The Simon Commission reported about Bengal that- “In some districts, the sub-infeudation has grown to astonishing proportions, as many as 50 or more intermediaries interests having been created between the zamindars at the top and the actual cultivators at the bottom.” With the increasing sub-infeudation, relations between the zamindar and the cultivator became more strained and a greater gulf was created between the two.
By vesting the zamindar with all residuary rights of property the government exalted their status and helped a continuous improvement in their condition. On the other hand, the rights of the raiyats were exposed to damage. The practical security given by custom was shattered in and its place were substituted the shadowy protection of the courts and a vague promise of succour in future. By thus undermining the protection of the raiyats and giving a new bias to the interests of the zamindars, the Permanent Settlement altered the balance of rural society in Bengal.
(3) It Also Increased Rack-Renting:
It was estimated that 50 to 60 per cent of the gross produce on an average was handed over by the cultivator to the landlords towards the payment of rent. A survey of 27 farms under tenancy in the Punjab indicated that “of the net income of cultivation, less than 80% is enjoyed by the worker and the rest goes to the non-working owner of the land. Rack-renting has reached to a great extent in the areas where the system of crop-sharing prevails.”
According to Dr. Gyan Chand, “in Bengal nearly 1/5 of the total sown area of the province was cultivated under this system. These crop-sharers were generally landless labourers, expropriated proprietors or occupancy tenants with unduly small holdings. The proportion of the landlord’s share in the crop varied, but one half was the rule. The land-lord saved the cost of cultivation, avoided all risks in the enterprise and was yet assured of some return from his lands. In addition to his share, he made the tenant pay premium and render other services for being permitted to cultivate land.”
In Bihar, landlord’s share except where it was a fixed quantity of grain per bigha, was nine twentieths but this led the landlord to call upon the tenant to render services, make presents or pay dues on tolls. In U.P. nearly one-fourth of the sown area may be said to be under this system. The share croppers had to pay half the gross produce and in most cases many perquisite levies. In the Punjab, about 50% of the sown area was cultivated by tenants-at-will who were all share-croppers. The proportion of the landlord’s share in this province varied from 1/4 to 1/2, but the latter was generally the rule.
To sum up, it may be noted that far from being leaders landlords became absentee parasites. The zamindari tenure proved harmful to cultivators and stood in the way of agricultural progress. The cultivators suffered from rack-renting and insecure tenure. Frequent enhancement of rent and constant fear of ejectment discouraged all enterprise on their part. Cultivation under zamindari tenure was much less efficient than cultivation by peasant proprietors.
“Give a man the secure possession of a bleak-rock and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years’ lease of a garden and he converts it into a desert.” H. Calvert has rightly said. They generally take less care in preparing the crops, plough landless often, manure it less and use fewer implements upon it than owners. They grow less valuable crops, especially avoiding those requiring the sinking of capital in the land; they make little or no effort at improving their fields; they often keep a lower type of cattle; they avoid perennials and bestow no care on tree.
Besides, there is an increase of turn cultivating land-owners everywhere, even in the strongholds of cultivating proprietorship. This encroachment of landlordism has brought in its wake all the evils of spendthrift and iniquitous land management.
Evaluation of the Permanent Settlement by the Land Revenue Commission of Bengal:
The following arguments were advanced in favour of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal:
(i) Financially, it had ensured to the State a fixed stable revenue without the necessity of incurring heavy expenses in connection with periodical reassessment; and collection.
(ii) Politically, it has secured the loyalty of the zamindars in the task of consolidating of British rule in India.
(iii) Socially, it enabled the zamindars to act as the natural leaders of the ryots and to show their public spirit in a practical manner by helping the spread of education and sound ideas on sanitation, etc.
(iv) Economically, it secured agricultural enterprise and prosperity and a resourceful peasantry which had shown a remarkable power of resistance in times of scarcity.
(v) Lastly, it avoided the evils associated with the temporary settlements, such as the harassment of the cultivator at the time of revision, the expensive machinery required for settlement.
But all these advantages were brought at a heavy price. The Bengal Land Revenue Commission was appointed under the chairmanship of Sir Francis Floud to examine the existing land revenue system of Bengal with special reference to the Permanent Settlement and to appraise the advantages and disadvantages of the existing system. It was of the opinion that zamindari system had developed so many defects that it has ceased to serve any national interest.
In brief, the Land Revenue Commission said. The zamindar has become an incubus on the working agricultural population which finds no justification in the performance of any material service, so far as agricultural improvements are concerned and fails to provide for any effective means for the development of the resources of the land. The Commission further emphasised that the “present system ought not to remain unaltered… for whatever may have been the justification for permanent settlement in 1793. It is no longer suited to the conditions of the present time.”
The Commission observed, “The disease is far advanced and no half-measures will satisfactorily remedy its defect, i.e. given the actual cultivator a safe tenure, a fair rent and a guarantee that he would be left free to enjoy in full the fruits of his soil. Provides, that a practicable scheme can be devised to acquire the interests of all classes of rent receivers on reasonable terms, the policy should be to aim at bringing the actual cultivators into the position of tenants holding directly under Government.”
The Commission recommended the following measures:
(a) The abolition of the zamindari system and the acquisition by the government of the interests of all the rent receivers above the actual cultivators.
(b) The payment of compensation at a flat rate for all interests, the rate of compensation being 10 or 12 or 15 times the net profit secured by the zamindar or the tenure holder.
(c) Fishery and mineral rights should also be included in the scheme of state acquisition.
(d) The imposition of an agricultural income-tax as a traditional measure until the scheme of state acquisition is effected, the proceeds of tax being earmarked for agricultural improvement.
The tenure system based on the permanent settlement led to a number of evils such as absentee-landlordism, rack-renting, and economic serfdom of the tenants. All these results soon brought the act to light that the main advantages claimed for a permanent settlement could be secured equally well by a temporary settlement for a fairly long period, the state reserving the right to enhance the land revenue assessment at the end of every such period.
The British Government, therefore, adopted the policy of recognising one person with landlord rights and making him responsible for land revenue, but it fixed the land revenue due from these estates on a temporary basis. This led to the origin of the Temporary Settlement which differed from the Permanent Settlement in two aspects viz., the land revenue assessed on the estate was fixed only for a specified period and secondly, greater care had been taken to protect the rights of the parties below the persons recognised as landlords by government.
Under the Temporary Settlement systems were included:
(a) The Taluqdars of Avadh;
(b) The Landlords in Agra, and
(c) The Malguzars of M.P.
(a) The Taluqdars of Avadh:
They were originally the revenue farmers. The rulers of Avadh had been in the habit of entrusting the collection land revenue to the descendants of the dispossessed Rajahs, to bankers and capitalists and to military officials and by the time of the advent of the British these had consolidated their position and claimed landlord rights. Under the Avadh settlement, the taluqdars were recognised and settled with as zamindars but the land revenue assessed on their estate was made liable to periodical revision.
The Taluqdar estates were increased by:
(i) The taluqdar’s forcible encroachment on the land of his weak neighbour,
(ii) The adoption of fraudulent means,
(iii) Sale deeds obtained by force,
(iv) Forced sales by auction for arrears of revenues, and
(v) Bona fide sales by the holders in order to raise the revenue demanded by revenue-farmers of chakladars.
(b) Landlords in Agra:
In some parts of Agra the British came across territorial magnates who had risen to the landlord status by exercise of the revenue-farming rights under the Avadh kingdom. These were given only a limited over-lord rights over the estates of which they claimed to be owners. The village communities under them were directly settled with as the actual proprietors but the land revenue assessed on them was raised just so much as to allow for the payment of a taluqdari allowance of 10% of the land revenue to the overlord, direct from the government treasury.
(c) The Malguzars of the M.P.:
They owned their landlord status to land revenue settlement with the British. The Maratha rulers had employed individuals known as malguzar and patels to collect land revenue from the various villages, and these in course of time strengthened their position and claimed landlord’s rights. When the territory came under the Britishers, the British Government settled with the malguzars on whom they conferred proprietary rights. The land revenue due from the malguzar was liable to periodical revision and the rights of the root below the malguzar were more carefully protected.
Evaluation of the Temporary Settlements:
Benefits of the System:
This system is said to have gained the following advantages:
(i) The system of temporary settlement afforded the opportunity to the government to revise its rates of revenue and to enjoy the benefits of the increment in land values.
(ii) In the raiyatwari areas, the cultivators had the chance of remission of revenue in times of famine or scarcity. They also had the liberty to give up their holdings or proportions thereof and thus had the choice either to retain the title or divert their resources to other fields of investment.
(iii) The evils of landlordism are avoided, for the raiyats are directly under the state which was their immediate landlord, and, hence, the chances of oppression were minimised.
Temporary settlement was better than the permanent settlement because it struck a happy compromise between the legitimate claims of the State and the rights and convenience of agriculturists.
Demerits of Temporary Settlement:
But on the other hand, temporary settlement suffered from certain drawbacks such as:
(i) Under this system, the amount of revenue tended to become uncertain since its collection depended on monsoon conditions, which were themselves very uncertain and irregular.
(ii) The benefits of a rise in prices of agricultural commodities. If any, went to the State and not to the raiyats at the time of reassessment.
(iii) The cost of frequent revision of assessment was heavy and the visitation and harassment of the raiyats were considerable.
(iv) Under this system, the land tended to deteriorate towards the end of the settlement in consequence of the deliberate neglect on the part of raiyats or tenants in order to escape enhancement of assessment.
(v) Though in the temporary settled areas the principle of assessment was not tax improvement and to charge only 50% of the net asset, the assessment amounted in many cases to a substantial part, or the whole, of the economic rent. The assessment, of revenue depended on the arbitrary decision of the Settlement Officers and they were open to bribery and other unfair means.
In sum, therefore, it may be said that the tenurial system in India has been very defective, it gave rise to absentee landlordism who never made any improvements on land, nor even supervised agricultural operations. It was interested in land only to the extent of extraction of exorbitant rent. The money raised by them did not result in capital formation but increased conspicuous consumption on women, wine and vices. The landlord symbolised oppression and tyranny. Agriculture was in fact, reduced to subsistence farming. It was disincentive-ridden.
Further the system inflicted injustices on cultivators in three ways. Firstly, cultivators working as tenants did not get a fair share of their produce. They are highly rack rented. Secondly, with no certainty about the tenure, particularly in tenancy-at-will, they suffer throughout their lives from insecurity, and they have to work under constant fear of eviction from land.
Thirdly, a vast majority have become landless or joined the ranks of tenants or agricultural workers. The richer cultivators acquired more land. Inequality of land ownership can be judged from the fact that the top 5 percent of rural households own more than what the bottom 80 percent own.