Mahalwari System (Land Revenue Systems in British India)

About Mahalwari System 

The Adoption of mahalwari system in parts of Northern India began to be considered in 1819 when Holt Mackenzie, the secretary to the board of commissioners, recommended this form of the settlement of land revenue. 

The recommendation was formalized by the Regulation VII of 1922. The complex method of survey, high revenue demand, and harsh methods of extraction led to a breakdown of the scheme. The situation was worsened by the agricultural depression of 1828. Even as arrears began to accumulate, land remained uncultivated; and there were few buyers of land. It was in 1833, when William Bentinck was governor general, that the Regulation of 1833 simplified the procedure for estimating the produce. 

Merttins Bird, regarded as the Father of Land Settlements in Northern India, supervised the new scheme. It consisted of a survey of a tract of land showing field boundaries of cultivated and fallow lands. The state share was fixed at 66 per cent of the rental value and the settlement was made for 30 years.

Even this rate was too high, so Lord Dalhousie issued fresh directions to the settlement officers in 1855 under which the state demand was limited to 50 per cent of the rental value.

This system came to be known as a modified zamindari system because the village headman was a link between the individual cultivator and the government; however, he did not have the rights that the zamindari had.

It is to be noted that the settlement had different versions and operated with different names at different places. In the North Western Provinces , it went under the name of 'mauzawar'; in the region of the Central Provinces its name was 'malguzari'. 

The system was a dual system in which settlement was done collectively with the whole community and also with the individual landlords.

Features of the Systems

Mahal, a Hindi word denoting a house or by extension an estate, was the basis of revenue assessment in this system; in the mahalwari system, a mahal could be a village or a group of villages and was considered as the unite for assessment of tax.

2. Revenue was determined on the basis of the produce of a mahal.

3. The village community was considered the owner of the land. Individual ownership rights lay with the cultivator.

4. Each individual farmer gave his share of the tax.

5. The responsibility of collection of the tax and payment of that tax to the Company government lay with the village headman or a community of village leaders.

6. Under Bentinck, the state's revenue share was 66 per cent of the rental value; later this was modified to 50 per cent.

7. The concept of average rents for different soil classes was introduced.

8. In the mahalwari regions, the land revenue was revised periodically.

Disadvantages of The Systems

1. The system required the government officials to record all the rights of cultivators, zamindars, and others and fix the tax payable on every piece of land. This was practically impossible to implement.

2. The calculations the officials made were often quite inaccurate, often being based on guesswork, and the collectors usually manipulated them to increase the revenue due to the government. There was scope for corruption too. 

3. It hardly favoured the village communities; it, in fact, ruined them by imposing exorbitant tax assessments that could not be complied with.

4. In the face of inability of cultivators and landholders to meet the rates of taxation, large tracts of land went to moneylenders and merchants who ousted the old cultivating proprietors or turned them into tenants.

5. On the whole, the settlement system led to the impoverishment and large scale dispossession of the cultivating communities of North India, and their resentment and discontent found expression in the popular uprising in 1857. 

6. From the Company point of view, more was spent for the collection than the revenue collected.