What is the Permanent Settlement?

What is the Mahalwari system?

In 1822, the arrival of Holt Mackenzie’s Mahalwari system is a land revenue settlement. It let cultivators in a cluster of villages or just one, own and manage the land collectively. How much land each household was entitled to depend on their role in the overall cultivation of the mahal(group of villages)....

What is the Permanent Settlement?

Introduced in 1793 by the British East India Company, the Permanent Settlement was a novel taxation system devised to create steady revenue for landowners. This framework established fixed targets for tax collection and required landowners to assume the role of tax collectors for their tenants. Consequently, the government received its due tax revenue from the landowners....

Differences between the Mahalwari system and the Permanent Settlement

During British rule in India, two major land revenue systems were introduced: the Permanent Settlement and the Mahalwari system. Despite their shared objective of effective revenue collection, the systems were marked by significant distinctions....

Why was the Mahalwari system replaced by the Permanent Settlement?

In areas where land ownership and cultivation rights were determined by the responsibility of the community, the Mahalwari system reigned. The system implied that the profits and losses from farming activities were shared among all village members. It eventually led to disputations among various groups regarding the distribution of land and sharing of crops....

Conclusion

Introduced during British rule in India, the land revenue systems of the Permanent Settlement and Mahalwari system held significant importance. Rather than a uniform taxation method, the Mahalwari system focused on communal land ownership with charges levied on individual cultivators. In contrast, the Permanent Settlement set unchanging tax rates for landlords to pay, who could then transfer the expenses to their tenants....