The ryotwari system was a land revenue system in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

introduced by

Thomas Munro Major-General Sir Thomas Munro, 1st Baronet KCB (27 May 17616 July 1827) was a Scottish soldier and British colonial administrator. He served as an East India Company Army officer and statesman, in addition to also being the governor of Mad ...

, which allowed the government to deal directly with the cultivator ('ryot') for revenue collection and gave the peasant freedom to cede or acquire new land for cultivation.

Description

This system was in operation for nearly 5 years and had many features of revenue system of the Mughals. It was instituted in some parts of India, one of the three main systems used to collect revenues from the cultivators of agricultural land. These taxes included un differentiated land revenue and rents, collected simultaneously. Where the land revenue was imposed directly on the

ryot Ryot (alternatives: raiyat, rait or ravat) was a general economic term used throughout India for peasant cultivators but with variations in different provinces. While zamindars were landlords, raiyats were tenants and cultivators, and served as hi ...

s (the individual cultivators who actually worked the land) the system of assessment was known as ryotwari. Where the land revenue was imposed indirectly through agreements made with Zamindars the system of assessment was known as zamindari. In

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...

and

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

the

Zamindar A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous feudal lord of a ''zamindari'' (feudal estate). The term itself came into use during the Mughal Empire, when Persian was the official language; ''zamindar'' is the ...

usually did not have a position as a middleman between the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

and the farmer. An official report by

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...

, who was working for the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

in 1857, explained the Ryotwari land tenure system as follows: This took place in the Madras presidency and later extended to Bombay presidency

History

The Ryotwari system is associated with the name of

, who was appointed Governor of

in May 1820. Subsequently, the Ryotwari system was extended to the Bombay area. Munro gradually reduced the rate of taxation from one half to one third of the gross produce, even then an excessive tax. In Northern India, Edward Colebrooke and successive

Governors-General Governor-general (plural governors-general), or governor general (plural governors general), is the title of an official, most prominently associated with the British Empire. In the context of the governors-general and former British colonies, ...

had implored the Court of Directors of the East India Company, in vain, to redeem the pledge given by the British government, and to permanently settle the land-tax, so as to make it possible for the people to accumulate wealth and improve their own condition. Payment of the land tax in cash, rather than in kind, was instituted in the late 18th century when the East India Company wanted to establish an exclusive monopoly in the market as buyers of Indian goods. The requirement of cash payments frequently proved economically untenable for cultivators, exposing them to the exorbitant demands of moneylenders when crops failed.

In
Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...
and
Northern India North India is a geographical region, loosely defined as a cultural region comprising the northern part of India (or historically, the Indian subcontinent) wherein Indo-Aryans (speaking Indo-Aryan languages) form the prominent majority populati ...
the
zamindar A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous feudal lord of a ''zamindari'' (feudal estate). The term itself came into use during the Mughal Empire, when Persian was the official language; ''zamindar'' is the ...
i system was as follows

* To collect tax from a land, the British had zamindars bid for the highest tax rates; ''i.e.,'' zamindars quoted a tax rate that they promised to obtain from a particular land. * The highest bidder was made the owner of the land from which they collected the taxes. * The farmers and cultivators who owned the land lost their ownership and became tenants in their own land. * They were to pay the landlords/zamindars the tax for the land only in the form of cash and not in kind. * If a zamindar was not able to collect the quoted amount of tax, he lost the ownership.

By comparison, this is the way taxes had been collected by the king

* The tax could be paid either in cash or in kind. * Payments in kind were mostly in the form of land which was given to the king. * The king never made use of those lands, which could be bought back by the farmers after they got back some money. * The farmer owned his land. * Tax rates were reduced in case of a famine, bad weather or other serious event.

The differences are these

# Since the farmer had to pay only in cash under the new system, he could only sell it to a fellow farmer who started using the land for cultivation of a different crop and therefore was not willing to return it. # The farmer eventually lost some part of his land to someone else and consequently retained a highly awkward remnant of land for cultivation. # This led to excessive marketing of land, which lost its sentimental grip on the farmer. The land became merely a commodity. Also because of the political scheme of Subsidiary Alliances, the pressure on agricultural land made things worse. It led to a failure of administration, leaving the blame on the feudatory king of the province; which allowed the East India Company to easily take over the administration.

References

Bibliography