Agrarian Reform: Abolishing the Intermediary

In one line

The abolition of the intermediary transferred land from a class created by the colonial revenue settlements to the person who was already cultivating it, and the litigation it produced changed the Constitution.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: agrarian reform in India had four stages, of which the first was the ABOLITION OF INTERMEDIARIES. Under the colonial revenue systems the State collected its revenue through three arrangements: the ZAMINDARI or permanent settlement, introduced in Bengal in 1793 and extended to Bihar, Orissa and parts of the north, under which a revenue farmer was recognised as the proprietor of an estate and paid a fixed sum, keeping the rest of what he collected; the RYOTWARI settlement of Madras and Bombay, under which the State settled the revenue directly with the cultivator; and the MAHALWARI settlement of the north-west, under which it was settled with a village body. Between 1950 and the early 1960s every State abolished the intermediary tenures. The legislation was immediately challenged as violating the then fundamental right to property, and the Constitution (First Amendment) Act 1951 inserted articles 31A and 31B and the NINTH SCHEDULE within fifteen months of the Constitution's commencement. In The State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh the Supreme Court upheld the Bihar Act as a whole while striking down parts of it.

The three revenue systems

Zamindari, the permanent settlement of 1793. Lord Cornwallis fixed the revenue in perpetuity and recognised the zamindar as the PROPRIETOR of the estate. Two consequences follow. The State's revenue was frozen while land values rose, so the surplus accrued to the intermediary. And the cultivator, who had held under a customary arrangement, became a tenant of a proprietor whose title the State had created.

Ryotwari, Madras and Bombay. The revenue was settled directly with the RYOT, the cultivator, without an intermediary, and revised periodically. There was no proprietor between the State and the tiller, though sub-tenancy and sub-infeudation grew up underneath.

Mahalwari, the north-west provinces and Punjab. The revenue was settled with the MAHAL, a village or a group of co-sharers, jointly and severally liable.

Why the difference matters. Abolition of intermediaries was a very large operation in the zamindari areas and a much smaller one in the ryotwari ones, which is why the later stages, tenancy and ceilings, dominate the story in the south and west.

And the common feature. In all three, layers of sub-tenancy had grown between the recorded holder and the person actually cultivating, so that the rent passed upward through several hands and the cultivator's own status was often unrecorded. That is the condition the reform attacked and the condition that produced the Naxalbari rising in [The Naxalite Movement: Origin and Development].