Land revenue: Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari

Land revenue was the British Empire's main income in India, and the way it was collected shaped rural life for generations. In Bengal, Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement in 1793. It recognised zamindars as owners of the land and fixed their revenue payment to the state permanently, on the theory that a fixed demand would encourage them to improve their estates. In practice, many zamindars could not pay and lost their estates at auction, while peasants gained no protection and paid whatever rent the zamindar demanded.

In the south and west, the Company tried a different system. The Ryotwari settlement, associated with Thomas Munro in the Madras Presidency and later extended to Bombay, settled revenue directly with the ryot, the peasant cultivator, cutting out the zamindar. The demand was revised periodically and was often set high, and the peasant, who had to pay in cash whether the harvest was good or bad, frequently fell into debt to moneylenders. The system gave the state a direct relationship with millions of cultivators, but it did not give them security.

In the north-western provinces and parts of central India, the Mahalwari system settled revenue with the village community or mahal, whose leading men collected it jointly. It was introduced in its early form in 1822 and revised in 1833 under the influence of Holt Mackenzie and later James Thomason. Like the other systems, it aimed to maximise revenue and to create a class of landholders loyal to the state, and like them it left the actual cultivator exposed when crops failed or prices fell.

The three systems are best understood together. All three turned land into a commodity that could be sold for unpaid revenue, all three demanded payment in cash, and all three pushed peasants towards moneylenders and cash crops. Their differences mattered for who held the land and who collected the tax, but their common effect was to make the village economy serve the revenue needs of a distant state.