Readers may recall that AgriMatters had devoted a column to Kautilya’s policy on agriculture, based on the ‘Arthashatsra’. Although it was written as a treatise on governance, it offered very useful insights into the land revenue system, settlement procedures, agricultural implements, irrigation systems and the need for state intervention in building strategic grain reserves, and market intervention to keep prices within acceptable range.
This time, AgriMatters will take up ‘Ain –i- Akbari’, the gazetteer of the Great Mughal to see what insights can be gathered from this text, and ‘Risala-i- Zirat’ which was specially commissioned by the East India Company to study the land settlement and land revenue systems when the Mughal empire was at its decline, and the Company was becoming the dominant force in the country.
We shall first examine ‘Ain-i- Akbari’, which does give us an idea of the gross cropped area under the Mughals, and also the system of revenue collection. It is clear that the Mughal system was not as elaborate as the one outlined in the Arthashastra, and the focus was more on the ‘effective collection’ of land revenue and the maintenance of a large army, rather on ‘efficient resource utilization’. However because the state needed to fund the large Imperial establishment, more area came under the plough from 1600 to 1785 than in the eleven centuries after Arthashastra. In fact. Shireen Moosvi estimates that over sixty one percent (61%) of the total farmed land area in 1910 had been under the assessment of the Mughal Empire, implying a rapid increase in the pace of new cultivation.
The strength of the Mughal system lay in the fact that it was quick and easy to implement. It collected wealth from a large number of intermediaries – zamindars and Rajas – as Mughal Jagirdars inserted themselves militarily into existing territories of ‘payments – for entitlements’. Mughal records never dug below the level of zamindars, or tracked the payments moving up the hierarchy from villages and towns, to regional centers and then to the Imperial capital. However it must be mentioned that even though the land revenue under the Mughals increased, it was not disruptive, and what was collected as revenue went back to pay the ‘part – time soldiers’, who for the rest of the year were ‘full time peasants’. In fact David Ludden in his magisterial work on the Agrarian History of South Asia says that the agrarian surplus in the Mughal times, financed not just the empire, but also all the rebellions against it!
Another interesting feature of the ‘Ain-i- Akbari’ is that it has listed zamindars by ethnicity, rather than the area under their domain. Thus we learn that Tyagis (cultivating Brahmins) Rajputs, Jats, Ahirs, Gujjars and Muslims. Thus the Mughal Empire also tried to balance the different power equations by granting these land revenue appropriation rights. It also became clear that the peasant and his production system, or the ways in which his produce was procured and brought to the market did not occur as an important element in the discourse of the state. However the state was interested in settling ownership disputes, as it was felt that ownership disputes led to less area under plough with immediate fallout on production and land revenue.
We now come to ‘Risala-i-Zirat’, the first comprehensive document on the land revenue collection system, which was specifically commissioned by the East India Company. Unlike the Arthashastra which laid a lot of emphasis on the normative guidelines, the rule of Law (Dharma), and the ‘Ain’, which was interested in the broad spectrum, the ‘Risala’ went into empirical facts –how much was each revenue unit producing, and how much of it was being collected. However, unlike the Mughals, the Company did not want the Zamindar to double up as a military leader: it wanted them to drop anchor and remain at the same place for all times in perpetuity, and become the loyal anchor for the Company. Thus came the Permanent Settlement of 1793, which created a new kind of entitlement for the Zamindars of Bengal. There was no equivalence of this class with any feudal system anywhere, for the ‘ zamindari’ titles were to be sold y auction to the highest bidder. Thus far from being a reward for services rendered to, or expected by the State, this became a commercial proposition, which created the worst form of rent seeking behaviour at all levels. The defects of the system soon became apparent, and therefore the Bengal Presidency exemplar was abandoned for the Mahalwari and the Ryotwari systems of land settlement – in the former the village gave tax as a unit, and in the latter, the farmer entered into a direct transaction with the state.
But the East India Company did to Indian agriculture what had never been done before. The independent peasant became a ‘serf’ on his own land and lost all his choices. He could grow only what he was asked to and on terms that were offered. Within a few years of the Risala’s publication, agrarian regions in India acquired ‘export identities’. Thus opium from Bihar and Bengal became the cornerstone of the trade with China. The bankers of London who raised capital for the Indian railways, worked with the Parliament to boost cotton exports from Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai) and Punjab. Assam and Darjeeling became tea country (along with Sri Lanka) as British took land from the farmers for a pittance, and acquired labour supplies from tribal tracts in UP and Bihar for these new plantations. Imagine the scale of ecological and human disruption that must have been caused. Mysore coffee was first a peasant crop, but the British converted Malnad into a coffee country. As the list grew longer, jute became very important because everything that had to move long distances had to be stacked and packed!
AgriMatters hopes to continue the story of Indian agriculture by looking out for similar tracts, which tell a fascinating story about the interface of agriculture with Imperial policy, and vice versa.