Land Ownership in India Before Independence

Land own­er­ship pat­terns under the British rule#

a. Per­ma­nent Set­tle­ment Of Ben­gal/ Zamin­dari Sys­tem#

Lord Corn­wal­lis intro­duced the Per­ma­nent Set­tle­ment in 1793. Under this sys­tem, a class of land­lords called Zamin­dars was cre­ated whose respon­si­bil­ity it was to pay a fixed rent to the gov­ern­ment for the lands they owned. They gave out parcels of land to farm­ers who became their ten­ants. Their title to the land was hered­i­tary. What was intended as a sys­tem ben­e­fi­cial for all par­ties con­cerned soon turned out to be exploita­tive. The State was only con­cerned with max­imis­ing rev­enue with min­i­mum effort. The Zamin­dar too wanted max­i­mum rent from his ten­ants irre­spec­tive of the land’s true poten­tial. He could increase his own wealth by extract­ing most out of his farmer ten­ants since his due to the State was fixed. In addi­tion, sev­eral lay­ers of inter­me­di­aries were cre­ated between the Zamin­dar and the ten­ants adding to the bur­den. The land­less farm­ers and labour­ers suf­fered greatly in poverty. Also, this led to the cre­ation of a group of rich Indi­ans whose loy­alty lay largely with the British. So the Per­ma­nent Set­tle­ment gave rise to the Zamin­dari sys­tem of ten­ancy in Ben­gal and soon was adopted in other regions.

Another sys­tem was called the Jagir­dari sys­tem which was sim­i­lar to the Zamin­dari sys­tem.

b. Ryot­wari Sys­tem#

Under this sys­tem, the pro­pri­etor of land gave the rent and taxes directly to the gov­ern­ment in the absence of any mid­dle­men. It was started in Madras by Thomas Munro and later adopted in Bom­bay as well.

c. Mahal­wari Sys­tem#

This sys­tem was intro­duced in 1822 and revised under William Bentinck's gov­ern­ment in 1833. Under it, land­lords or vil­lage head­men were respon­si­ble for the pay­ment of rev­enue to the State. These land­lords or Zamin­dars had a whole vil­lage or a group of vil­lages under their con­trol. The Mahal­wari sys­tem pre­vailed in UP, the North West­ern Province, Pun­jab and parts of Cen­tral India.

Out­comes of the landown­ing sys­tems of the colo­nial era#

• Extreme peas­ant indebt­ed­ness due to sky-high tax rates.
• Cre­ation of a class of a rich few who mostly exploited the poor peas­ant.
• Peas­ants lived in con­stant fear of evic­tion.
• Poverty was entrenched into the farmer class.

These sys­tems cre­ated, at the time of inde­pen­dence, a class of land­lords who owned large swathes of land and innu­mer­able peas­ants who owned noth­ing and lived in dire poverty and mis­ery. The fol­low­ing fig­ures will reveal this.

7% of the landown­ers owned 54% of land. In con­trast, only 6% of land was owned by 28% of landown­ers (with mar­ginal and sub-mar­ginal hold­ings).

Land reforms since inde­pen­dence#

Land reforms refer to the reg­u­la­tion of own­er­ship, oper­a­tion, leas­ing, sales, and inher­i­tance of land.

Why land reform mat­tered after inde­pen­dence#

Land is the basis of all eco­nomic activ­ity, and for a largely agrar­ian soci­ety like India this mat­ters a great deal.

Indian rural soci­ety is sym­bol­ised by a rich landown­ing minor­ity (zamin­dars/land­lords) and an impov­er­ished land­less major­ity (peas­ants). There­fore, land reforms are a vital step towards eco­nomic and social equal­ity.

Com­mon ques­tions#

What do you under­stand by the term Land Reforms?#

Land reform gives land own­er­ship to the peo­ple who work that piece of land, thus improv­ing their liv­ing con­di­tions. Land reforms ben­e­fit the coun­try as a whole: they help the poor and also make soci­ety fairer and more sta­ble. They give farm­ers a sense of own­er­ship and dig­nity, which is impor­tant in build­ing a good rela­tion­ship between ten­ant farm­ers and land­lords.