Ryotwari

Land revenue system in British India

The ryotwari system was a land revenue system in British India introduced by Thomas Munro, 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.

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.

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.

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.