# Ryotwari and Mahalwari, the other land settlements
**रैयतवाड़ी और महालवाड़ी, ज़मीन के दूसरे बंदोबस्त**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ryotwari-mahalwari/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1820 CE – 1833 CE
- Where: Fort St George, Madras (13.0797, 80.2875)
- Tags: colonial, political

## Summary

Madras and Bombay tax each cultivator directly, the north taxes the village as a body, and neither fixes the demand for ever as Bengal did.

मद्रास और बंबई हर किसान से सीधे कर लेते हैं, उत्तर पूरे गाँव से, और कोई भी बंगाल की तरह माँग को हमेशा के लिए तय नहीं करता।

## Account

The Permanent Settlement of 1793 fixed Bengal's revenue for ever and made the zamindar answerable for it. Outside Bengal the Company went another way. In the Baramahal, annexed in 1792, Alexander Read and Thomas Munro began assessing each cultivator, the raiyat, field by field. The method was ordered for most of Madras by 1818, and Munro carried it further as Governor from 1820 to 1827. In Bombay, Robert Pringle's surveys of 1824 to 1828 set the demand at 55 per cent of net produce and failed. A new survey by Wingate and Goldsmid began in 1835, and their Joint Report of 1847 became the rule.

In the North-Western Provinces, Holt Mackenzie's Minute led to Regulation VII of 1822, under which each mahal, a village or estate, was assessed on a full inquiry and its co-sharers were jointly liable. The inquiry proved too heavy to complete. Regulation IX of 1833 simplified the method, and the settlement under R. M. Bird took two thirds of the gross rental as its standard. The map of British India thus carried three land regimes, and the differences outlived the Company.

The cultivator had no landlord, but the demand was high and could be raised at each resettlement, and local headmen and creditors kept much of their power. Whether the split still shows in Indian farming today is argued: see the claim below.

## Sources

- Baden-Powell, The Land-Systems of British India, vol. 3 (1892) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.55165 (Raiyatwari in Madras and Bombay)
- Baden-Powell, The Land-Systems of British India, vol. 2 (1892) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.55164 (North-Western Provinces, Regulations VII of 1822 and IX of 1833)
- Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (1959) [second-hand] (Not read directly; cited as a standard reference or through another work.)
- Banerjee and Iyer, 'History, Institutions, and Economic Performance', American Economic Review 95 (2005) — https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0002828054825574


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