Land tenure system in Pre-Independence Era.
Very little is known about the land tenure system in pre Mughal period and the argument is confined to largely two options :the state or the peasant ownership. The peasant who converted the forest land into arable land got the proprietorship of that land. The king did not had any property rights in land except the right to share of crop produce that too in return for the “protection of his subjects”. Most of the Scholars agree that the peasant enjoyed the permanent and inheritable occupancy rights and had the right to use till the land was cultivated. The king was not expected to evict them.
During the Mughal administration, land revenue was collected in the form of crop sharing. The two methods…show more content… Each jagirdar was assigned a jagir (area) and the pay associated with the rank was equivalent to the amount of land revenue. These ranks were not inheritable and this temporary character of jagirdarstrengthened the control of the king over the jagirdars. Thus the Jagirdars had no permanent rights over the area assigned to them and later in the Mughal period, many Jagirdars resorted to the exploitation of the peasants as they were unsure of the holdings rights given to them and had no regard for the long term prospects of revenue…show more content… The revenue collected from land constituted around 60 percent of the total revenue. The British introduced a new system which was an extension of the existing system in conformity with the British rule and laws relating land. Broadly three types of land revenue system were adopted by the British rule and each of them was an attempt to incorporate the elements of preceding agrarian structure: Landlord based system ( Zamindari), Individual cultivator based system (Raiyatwari) and village based systems (Mahalwari).
Landlord systems was established mainly in Bihar, Bengal and Orissa. In these areas the Landlord had the authority to collect the revenue directly from the cultivator and British government had no direct dealings with the cultivating peasants. In some areas they fixed the revenue to be paid by the Landlord to the government called the Permanent settlement of 1793 in Bengal. In other areas, temporary settlement was introduced where the revenue was fixed for certain number years and then subject to