CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 31 of 120

Correct — D, In principle, it strengthened the former elite, the zamindars and weakened the peasantry. This reverses the whole design of the system. Ryotwari was built to cut the intermediary out. Under it the Company assessed and taxed each individual cultivator directly, issued him a patta in his own name, and dealt with no landlord in between — which is precisely what the Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793) did not do. It is the Permanent Settlement that recognised zamindars as proprietors and made them the revenue-paying class; ryotwari was the alternative adopted where the Company either found no comparable landlord class or chose not to create one. The statement describes the Bengal model and attaches it to the wrong system.

• (a)In southern and western India, the ryotwari settlement was adopted. — True, so it cannot be the answer. Ryotwari grew out of Alexander Read's work in the Baramahal and Thomas Munro's in the Ceded Districts, and became the standard settlement of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies.
• (b)Ryotwari was in principle a direct contract between the ryot and the state. — True, and it is the defining feature of the system — the ryot held directly of the government, received a patta, and could give up or take on land at each settlement.
• (c)It means a tax contract valid for usually 30 years. — True in substance. Ryotwari was a temporary settlement, not a permanent one: the assessment was fixed for a term and then revised on a fresh survey, and thirty years became the standard cycle in Madras and Bombay after the resurveys of the 1860s.

The Company ran three broad land-revenue systems. The Permanent Settlement (Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, 1793) fixed the demand for ever on zamindars, who became proprietors and bore the risk of default. Ryotwari (Madras and Bombay) settled with the individual cultivator for a term of years after surveying and assessing his fields. Mahalwari (the North-Western Provinces and Punjab) settled with the village or mahal as a body, through its headmen. Which one a district got depended less on principle than on what the Company found on the ground and how much revenue it thought it could squeeze.

The clean way to test a land-revenue statement is to ask who signed the revenue engagement. Ryotwari's answer is the ryot; the Permanent Settlement's answer is the zamindar; mahalwari's answer is the village body. Statement 4 gives ryotwari the zamindar answer, so it is out on structure alone, without needing any date. Two honest qualifications belong on the record. First, 'strengthened the peasantry' would not be a fair description of ryotwari either — the assessments were heavy, they fell on the individual holder with no cushion in a bad year, and Munro's paternalist claim that he was protecting the ryot has been argued over ever since. The statement is wrong because it names the wrong beneficiary class, not because ryotwari was kind. Second, option (c) is the loosest of the four: thirty years is the revision cycle that settled in later, not a figure written into the system from the start, so a reader who has met a twenty-year or a shorter cycle should treat it as broadly right rather than exact.

• Under ryotwari the cultivator paid revenue directly to the government and received a patta, or title deed, from it, and the holding was surveyed and assessed before being taxed.
• Alexander Read and Thomas Munro are the two administrators associated with introducing the system; Munro, Governor of Madras from 1820, extended it across the Presidency.
• The Permanent Settlement of 1793, introduced by Lord Cornwallis in Bengal, is the settlement that made zamindars proprietors of the soil.
• Ryotwari was a temporary settlement: the demand was fixed for a term and revised on resurvey, thirty years becoming the usual cycle in Madras and Bombay.
• Mahalwari, the third system, settled revenue at the level of the village or mahal rather than with either a landlord or a single cultivator.

• Swapping the beneficiary class — attributing the zamindar's position under the Permanent Settlement to ryotwari.
• Reading 'direct contract with the state' as 'light assessment'; ryotwari demands were often severe and fell on the individual with no intermediary to absorb a bad year.
• Assuming ryotwari was permanent because the Bengal settlement was; ryotwari was fixed only for a term and revised on resurvey.

Usually as a which-is-not-correct item on one land-revenue system, or as a match-the-following pairing the three systems with the party that signed the revenue engagement.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the ryotwari settlement, the document issued to the cultivator by the government recording his holding and its assessment was called

  • (a)Sanad
  • (b)Patta
  • (c)Firman
  • (d)Inam

  Answer(b) Patta — the ryot held directly of the state and was given a patta, or title deed, in his own name after the land had been surveyed and assessed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which land-revenue system of British India settled the revenue demand with the village or mahal as a body rather than with a landlord or an individual cultivator?

  • (a)Permanent Settlement
  • (b)Ryotwari
  • (c)Mahalwari
  • (d)Izaradari

  Answer(c) Mahalwari — used mainly in the North-Western Provinces and Punjab, where the engagement was taken from the village body through its headmen.