Book III, Chapter 5: Land Administration in the Central Provinces

CHAPTER V

LAND ADMINISTRATION IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES

THE three clear principles which were established at the great Settlement of 1863 were:—

(1) Recognition of proprietary rights in the Malguzars of the province;

(2) Limitation of the State-demand to half the rental;

(3) Making the Settlement for a long term of thirty years.

The recognition of proprietary rights was absolute and unreserved. It was not the creation of a new right, but the recognition, by the Government, of the state of things which had existed in practice. The Malguzars were virtually landlords, exercising nearly all the powers of landlords, and the State recognised them as such in the Settlement of 1863. This will appear clear from a few extracts which we shall place before our readers.

MALGUZARI SETTLEMENT OF 1863.

As early as 1853 the Secretary to the Government of the North-Western Provinces had declared:—

“Regarding the general principles of the Settlement, I am directed to intimate that his Honour has resolved that it shall be concluded on the basis of apparent or approximate proprietary right, in so far as such right can, with any approach to certainty or confidence, be traced; and that the leading object in so doing shall be to recognise fixed rights, or claims, or interests, in whatever form they may already have grown up, and to avoid an interference with them by any speculative acts or views of the officers of Government.”¹

And this declaration was repeated in the summaries appended to the Settlement Code of 1863:—

“The recognition of positive rights of ownership has hitherto been withheld. But those rights nevertheless existed, and are now to be recognised. The leading object is to recognise fixed rights or claims and interests, in whatever form they may have already grown up.

“When recognising and declaring rights, the word ‘confer’ is to be employed by Settlement Officers for the sake of form and expediency, in order to bar future contest or litigation.”²

It is a matter for regret that the principle so clearly established in the Settlement of 1863 was subsequently ignored. The sympathetic spirit of the administration of Sir Richard Temple had disappeared when Colonel Keatinge became the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces in 1871-72. The idea gained ground that virtually all rents paid by cultivators were due to the State; and that the Malguzar was a parvenu on whom the Government had “conferred” a right which could be taken away again. The Ryotwari System found favour with Colonel Keatinge; the Landlord System which had grown up in the Central Provinces, and had been recognised in 1863, was in disfavour. Accordingly a proposal was made to pull down the structure which had been built up, to bring the cultivators of the Central Provinces directly under the State, and to treat the Malguzars only as servants of the State, and remunerated by the State.

Mr. Peddar, Commissioner of the Nagpur Division, had himself a leaning towards the Ryotwari System; but he raised his voice against introducing a change in the Central Provinces which would be a breach of faith. And some passages of his elaborate letter on the subject deserve to be quoted:—

“We think that the persons, with whom the Settlement has now been made, have an equitable right to expect that its general principles will be sanctioned. The Malguzari System has been formally adopted by the Government for the whole of this Division. The Chief Commissioner [Sir Richard Temple] himself, in open Darbar, has explained that system, and has promised its introduction. Proprietary rights have accordingly been formally conferred after inquiry into the different claims to them. And on the strength of the belief thus created, obligations have in some instances been contracted. We consider, therefore, that all that can now be done is to modify the existing system in detail.”

“For the same reason we would deprecate the adoption of the system suggested in paragraph 20 of the Government of India letter. To consider the entire sum payable by the Ryots for their holdings at the time of the Settlement to be Government Revenue, and to remunerate the Mukadam by a percentage on this sum, plus the assessment of waste land brought into cultivation during the term of Settlement, would be to go back to the former system. And I entertain no doubt that this would be the correct course. But it would be an essential change in the principle of the present Settlement, and would be looked upon as a breach of faith by the Malguzars. Their position would be changed from that of land-owners, paying half the profits of their villages as assessment to Government, to that of hereditary servants, receiving remuneration from Government.”³

This letter must have damped the Ryotwari ardour of Colonel Keatinge, Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces. He forwarded it to the Government of India, approving of the modifications suggested by Mr. Peddar, but recommending that the main principles of the Settlement of 1863 should remain intact. The Government of India yielded, and maintained the proprietary rights of the Malguzar—but gave him the option of descending to the position of a hereditary servant.⁴ The Malguzar, we need hardly add, did not avail himself of this option—the fly did not come into the parlour.

RYOTWARI SYSTEM OF SAMBALPUR.

The district of Sambalpur had, on account of disturbances, failed to share in the general Settlement commenced in 1863. Here, therefore, Colonel Keatinge had a free hand. Sir Richard Temple had issued orders for a Malguzari Settlement in this district; but the orders had not yet been carried out. In 1863 Sir Richard Temple had visited Sambalpur, and proclaimed in open Darbar the principles of the contemplated Settlement; but the Darbar proclamation was not binding on his successor. Colonel Keatinge had a clean slate, and he wrote on it, Ryotwari Settlement. Proprietary rights were denied and withheld. The revenue-payers were to be considered lessees of their villages. They were to be remunerated by permission to hold their home-farms revenue-free. They would further be permitted to keep to themselves rents of waste lands brought under cultivation during the Settlement. And in view of Sir Richard Temple’s pledge to regard them as proprietors, they were made proprietors only with regard to their Bhogra lands. The Settlement was made for twelve years only, 1876 to 1888. Sambalpur has remained a Ryotwari District ever since.

It is sad to contemplate how the fates and fortunes of hundreds and thousands, and sometimes millions of people, are often determined under a non-representative Government by the whims of one official. The Malguzari System has been decided upon for the Central Provinces after years of anxious deliberation. It was based on customs which had grown up in the country. It had received the approbation of the Governments of Lord Canning and Sir Richard Temple. It was calculated to promote the agricultural wealth of the people. It had already been adopted in most parts of the Central Provinces. It had been promised in open Darbar at Sambalpur. The people of the district wished for it and asked for it. One man, Colonel Keatinge, desired to set aside the promises made, and to introduce Ryotwari Settlement in Sambalpur. His recommendations were not known to the people. The sanction of the Viceroy’s Council was given without consulting the people. And a Ryotwari Settlement was introduced in Sambalpur. Every unbiassed man will ask himself if this system of administration can be wise, or popular; if it can secure the welfare of a nation or strengthen British Rule in India.

THE RENTAL.

A Tenancy Act was passed in 1883. It recognised (1) Absolute Occupancy Tenants, who had full powers of transfer, and whose rents were fixed at the Settlement for thirty years; (2) Occupancy Tenants, with powers of transfer under certain conditions, and whose rents were fixed by the Settlement Officer for ten years; (3) Ordinary Tenants, with powers of transfer subject to the landlord’s consent, and whose rents were fixed for seven years. The Act had the same object as the Tenancy Acts of Bengal and Northern India, viz. the protection of the cultivators; but it bears traces of the unwillingness of the Government to recognise the full proprietary rights of the Malguzar. In Bengal and Northern India, landlords dealt with their own tenants, subject to the salutary checks imposed upon them by the law; but in the Central Provinces the Settlement Officer intervened, and settled the rents which the tenants should pay to their landlords. A healthy freedom of transactions between landlords and tenants was allowed in Bengal and Northern India; an unhealthy State interference was introduced in the Central Provinces. “We do not,” says Sir Antony Macdonnell in reference to Northern India, “for the purpose of assessing the Government Revenue, make a basis of our own; we proceed on the basis of actual facts which have been brought into existence by the operation of the ordinary law of rent, and the arrangement which the landlord has made with his own tenant.”⁵ But in the Central Provinces there is no operation of the ordinary law of rent; the Settlement Officer intervenes and makes the arrangement between the landlord and his tenant. This mischievous interference weakens the landlord and strangles the tenant-right. The Malguzar in the Central Provinces does not feel the responsibilities and the duties of a landlord when the Government Officer settles the rental for him. And the peasantry of the Central Provinces have not the independence, or the self-reliance of the Bengal peasantry; they do not know their own rights, and cannot defend them. A grandmotherly legislation makes both the landlord and the tenant weaker in the Central Provinces; nullifies the education which property gives to every owner of the land; stifles the staying power of the people; and finds them helpless and resourceless against the first outset of scarcity or famine. Nothing is more demoralising to an agricultural population than such needless intervention of the State in the ordinary transactions of agricultural industry. The right policy is that which has succeeded so well in Bengal and in Northern India. Afford adequate and ample protection to the cultivator by law; and then treat him as a responsible man, standing on his own legs, dealing with his landlord, knowing and defending his rights.

But the settling of the rental by Government officers created for the State itself a difficulty which it had not foreseen. In the Settlement of 1863, the actual rental of estates had been disregarded; and Settlement Officers had assessed the Land Revenue on a supposed rental which they thought the lands should bear. But when they themselves fixed the rental under the new Tenancy Act, they could hardly disregard it in the approaching Settlement of 1893. They would have to accept the rental they had fixed; and the prevailing rule compelled them to limit the Government Revenue to half that rental. The administrators were in a dilemma. They could not break through the rental they had fixed. And they could not break through the rule limiting the Government Revenue to half that rental.

SETTLEMENT OF 1893.

The proposal which was made in 1887, as an escape out of this difficulty, is one of the strangest documents in Indian official literature. Mr. Mackenzie, afterwards Sir Alexander Mackenzie, was then the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces. He was an able Bengal civilian, had been trained in secretariat work, and under the administration of Lord Ripon had drafted those important resolutions on Local Self-Government from which we have given some extracts in a previous chapter. Among many qualifications as a ruler, he lacked sympathy with the people, a respect for their aspirations, a just regard for their rights. His policy varied with the spirit of the times; and his administration of the Central Provinces, and subsequently of Bengal, was marked by some of the most retrograde measures of the closing century. In the Central Provinces he openly admitted that the Half-Rental rule had been evaded in 1863 by the Settlement Officer assuming a high rental; that the rule could not be evaded at the next Settlement because the rental was now legally defined and fixed; and that the rule therefore must be withdrawn. A few extracts from this remarkable document are given.

“Under the method of assessment which was then followed [in 1863] it was, however, practically impossible for an Officer in any part of the province, who saw that an enhancement of revenue was justifiable and sought to secure this, to give full effect to a rule restricting the Government Revenue to a definite share of the assets, unless the term assets received a very loose and general interpretation. The assets or rental value of each Mahal [estate] was in fact determined by the comparison of a number of statistical inferences, the principal of which was that obtained by the application of soil-rates to the areas under different soils in a village, which yielded the soil-rate rental. Whether this rental corresponded in any way with the real rental of the Mahal depended on the extent to which rents rose in the proceedings taken for rent adjustment after the assessment was given out.”

“The system of assessment, which is being followed in the Settlement of the Central Provinces now begun, differs essentially from that of the former Settlement. Under the Tenancy Act, the rents of all Absolute Occupancy and Occupancy Tenants must be fixed by the Settlement Officer. . . . It has, moreover, become very evident that it will further fall to the Settlement Officer to fix the rents of all Ordinary Tenants. . . . It will no longer be necessary for our Assessing Officer to assume, as the assets of an estate, a rental value which may or may may not be realised at rent adjustment. The rental value which he assumes for his assessment will be given effect to by him.”

“It must, moreover, be realised that the system of Settlement to which the Government has now, by law, committed itself, will render it impossible to evade the operation of the Half-Assets rule in the manner followed at the last Settlement. It will no longer be practicable to adopt for the application of the Half-Assets rule a rental value which is in excess of the actual adjusted rental, and in this way to make an assessment which, while nominally at Half-Assets, absorbs in reality a very much larger proportion of the income of the Malguzars.”

“Mr. Mackenzie would ask that the Half-Assets rule may be authoritatively declared inapplicable to the Central Provinces at the present Settlement, and that the Local Administration may be left to make a reasonable and moderate Settlement all round, subject to the final orders and approval of the Governor-General in Council.”⁶

The Government of Lord Dufferin was unwilling to enhance the Government Revenue wholly or principally from the Malguzar’s share of the assets, and suggested that the provisions of the law should be fully utilised by enhancing the rent of tenants.

“The fixing of rent by Settlement Officers under rules to be made by the Chief Commissioner under Section 82 is really the most important part of the Settlement operations. The method by which this duty is to be performed is not discussed in your letter, but it is noted that, in the Central Provinces Proceedings for March 1887, a scheme for revising rents is discussed by Mr. Fuller and Mr. Fitzpatrick, in which suggestions are made for a method (1) of raising unduly low rents to the local level, and (2) of raising all the rents of an area to a higher level when the whole of them are unduly low.”⁷

Mr. Mackenzie replied in a long communication, in which he asked for a latitude of 50 to 65 per cent. of the rental to be fixed as the Land Revenue.⁸ And the Government of India finally decided by allowing the latitude to the Chief Commissioner.

“The Government of India has some hesitation in allowing in any case so high a percentage as 65 to be taken; and would at least prefer that this maximum be restricted to those cases in which the former percentage was not at any rate below that fraction; and that in other estates 60 per cent. be taken as the highest admissible percentage.”⁹

There is scarcely anything in the entire range of Indian official literature which is more painful reading to the official, or to the public, than this correspondence. In Northern India the right of settling rents with tenants was left with the landlord; in the Central Provinces this right was deliberately assumed by the State under the Act of 1883. In Northern India legislation sought to restrain landlords from enhancing rents; in the Central Provinces the State deliberately laid down the policy of enhancing rents. In Northern India the State-demand was limited to one-half the rental fixed by landlords; in the Central Provinces this rule of half-rental was cast aside because it could no longer be evaded, and the State assumed the power of demanding 50 to 65 per cent. of the rental, after the State-Officers had raised that rental. A policy better calculated to repress agricultural wealth and prosperity, and to prepare the Province for starvation and famines, could hardly be compassed by the wit of man.

The final blow was dealt by Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India. He decided in 1895 that the period of Settlement, too, should be reduced from thirty to twenty years. The healthy rule which gave peace and rest to the agricultural population for a generation after a Settlement, a rule still observed in Northern India, Madras, and Bombay, was set aside in the Central Provinces as in the Punjab. More frequent revision of the assessment was the unsympathetic policy of the closing years of the century.

One by one the three cardinal principles of the Settlement of 1863 were whittled away within thirty-two years. The Proprietary Rights of Malguzars were restricted, and they were stopped from settling the rental of their estates. The Half-rental Rule was abandoned. The Thirty Years’ Rule was also abandoned. All the safeguards which had been provided by the Governments of Lord Canning and Sir Richard Temple for the growth of a prosperous landed class and a prosperous peasantry were removed one by one under the Governments of Lord Dufferin and Lord Lansdowne.

The settlement that followed was in accordance with the spirit of the new rules which had been framed. In a speech which the Hon. B. K. Bose, Member for the Central Provinces, made in Lord Curzon’s Council on March 28, 1900, he gave the following figures showing the percentage of increase in the rental imposed on the cultivators of the different districts in the new Settlement.

It will thus be seen that the Settlement Officers, true to the instructions of Lord Dufferin’s Government, raised the rental throughout the Province from 3 to 23 per cent. for the purposes of the new Settlement. This increase was in addition to the enhancements which had been made by the landlords themselves before that power was taken out of their hands. Rents were screwed up all round, so that the Land Revenue based on the rental might show an increase. If landlords themselves complained that they could not collect the high rents fixed, they complained in vain. They must pay the high Land Revenue assessed on the new rents, whether they could collect the rents or not.

It is due to one distinguished officer to make some mention of his endeavour to decrease the rigour of the assessment. Antony Macdonnell came as Chief Commissioner in the Central Provinces after Alexander Mackenzie. He refrained from fixing the Land Revenue as high as 65 per cent. of the rental in any district. The percentages generally varied between 50 and 60 per cent. But the evil had already been done. The rental had already been increased. And the Land Revenue assessed on that rental showed an enormous increase over the Land Revenue fixed in 1863. We quote the following figures from the speech of the Honourable Mr. Bose, already referred to.

And local taxes on the soil, which were insignificant in 1863, had risen to 12½ per cent. on the Land Revenue in addition to that revenue.

FAMINES OF 1897 AND 1900.

No serious famine had revisited the Central Provinces under British Rule. But the impoverishment of the people paves the way for famines. A failure of crops is a serious calamity in an agricultural country under all circumstances; but the effects of a famine become ten times more fatal if the people have no resources and no savings. The famine of 1897 was the most serious and fatal ever known in the Central Provinces. Districts were devastated. Cultivated lands became jungle. Large masses of the people were swept away. Both cultivation and population decreased. A question was then asked in the House of Commons by Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., if the operation of the New Settlement would be postponed until the famine was over. Lord George Hamilton declined to postpone the Settlement Operations.

But the hand of nature is stronger than the hand of man. A fresh famine desolated the unhappy Provinces in 1900. The new Settlement with its enhanced revenue demand became impossible. The Government was forced to suspend its operation. Abatements were made in Sagor, Damoh, Jabalpur, Seoni, Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad, and Nimar. Abatements were in progress in Betul, Wardha, Bhandara, Balaghat, and Raipur in 1902. An impossible Land Revenue had to be reduced after the Province had been devastated by two famines.

The people of the Province demand, not merely temporary abatements, but permanent reforms. No new measures are required; it is only necessary to go back to the principles of 1863. All departures from those principles have proved disastrous; they have weakened the landed classes and impoverished the peasantry. Settlements should be made for thirty years, as they are made in Northern India, Bombay, and Madras. The Land Revenue should be limited to one-half the actual rental, as it is limited in the Provinces of Agra, Oudh, and the Punjab. Additional cesses imposed on the soil since 1871 should be abolished. The cultivators should have the same rights in their holdings and the same protection against enhancements as are assured to cultivators in Bengal and Northern India under Tenancy Acts. And strengthened by such protection, they should be left to settle their rents with their landlords without the intervention of Settlement Officers. The intervention of the State in settling the rent of each field has, in effect, added to the rental, and impoverished the population.

RIGID RULES AND THEIR OPERATION.

No task, more unsuitable for the State, can well be imagined than to intervene and settle the rent which each tiller should pay to his landlord, and no task has been worse performed. The rules for fixing the rent are so complicated that they are neither properly understood nor properly worked.¹⁰ Poorly instructed and poorly paid Patels and Patwaris, getting three shillings to six shillings a week, are expected to work according to these impossible inductive and deductive rules! As a matter of fact, they vaguely imagine that the Government wants an increase in rental, and they secure one. Two or three Assistant Settlement Officers in a District cannot efficiently check the work of Patels and Patwaris over thousands of square miles. The fixing of the rent is therefore often a poor guess work, and the mistakes are against the cultivator. And the cultivator has no independent Land Court to appeal to against the finding of the official paid three to six shillings a week.

The mistakes which are most frequently made in fixing and enhancing rents are known universally in the Central Provinces. In the first place the classification of lands is often wrong, and Patels have a habit of placing on a higher class lands which really fall under a lower class. In the second place, the crop experiments, by which the productiveness of the different classes of soil is judged, are often misleading; no adequate allowance is made for dryage and loss in harvesting. In the third place, much cultivable land is left uncultivated owing to the want of seed grain, want of bullocks, or the general poverty of the cultivator. All such land is, however, included by Government Officers in fixing the rental; and the landlord has to realise rents for lands which tenants cannot cultivate, or to pay revenue for lands for which he gets no rent.¹¹ In the fourth place, it is proved in the case of minor’s estates, which the State administers for those minors, that State Officers are themselves unable to realise the rents they have fixed by something like 10 per cent. Private landlords necessarily bear a heavier loss. Fifthly, the instalments of the Government demand are not judiciously fixed. A large instalment is demanded in February in order to complete the collection within the financial year. Landlords press their tenants for rent in January in order to pay the revenue in February. The crops are not yet harvested in January, and the tenants have to mortgage standing crops, much under their fair value, to money-lenders in order to pay rents. Sixthly and lastly, while the law of Bengal empowers the Government to sell an estate in default of payment of revenue, the law of the Central Provinces empowers revenue officers to arrest a landlord and send him to prison for default. Such severity, unknown in the revenue laws of Bengal, is a stain on the administration of the Central Provinces.

TENANCY ACT OF 1898 AND NEEDED REFORMS.

A consolidating and amending Rent Act, passed in 1898, has not improved the position of the tenant. It provides that the rent of ordinary tenants shall be fixed by Settlement Officers for seven years. And provisions have been made restricting the alienation of home-farm lands by landlords, and the transfer of their right by occupancy and ordinary tenants. Such restrictions are unknown to Bengal laws, and they have the economic effect of lessening the marketable value of properties. It is not by such measures that the Central Provinces can regain their prosperity after the recent calamities. It is by more liberal measures, and by going back to the healthy principles of 1863, that the agricultural population of the Province can become strong, resourceful, self-reliant, and prosperous.

Footnotes