Question

How did the British Land Reform policy affect the Indian agriculture?

Answer 1

The disintegration of the mughal empire, the gradual conquests of the East India Company and the desire of the Bristish to extract maximum land revenue in cash made the British to evolve a land system in India which would ensure payment of land revenue and also establish a collaborating class in rural India.

Permanent land settlement
It is an infamous land reform policy of Lord Cornwallis in 1793 for Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and later extended to parts of North madras , created a class of zamindars who became “ landlords in perpetuity”. The land revenue was fixed on permanent basis and the zamindars were intermediaries between the rulers and the peasantry. The amount fixed broke the back of the peasantry. While under this system the peasants suffered enormously the landlords and the British rulers benefited.

Ryotwari system
Besides the Permanent settlement, the British evolved the Ryotwari in Madras presidency in 1820 by Sir Thomas Munro. In this system government and the cultivators would have direct relationship and land revenue will be settled directly between the two without any intermediary.

Major impact:

• Landlords became the system under these reforms.
• Moneylenders entered rural India, the tenants were unprotected and the majority of real cultivators becomes landless laborers.
• Commercialisation of agriculture began to take shape around 1860, it means agriculture become a market commodity.

To sum up, agrarian system and policies pursued by the British created stagnant agriculture, indebted peasantry, galloping landless labouring class, deaths though malnutrition, famines and epidemics. The basic land reform policy oriented to extract high land revenue whether peasantry could pay it or not makes the condition of agriculture and peasant both miserable.