IV. Answer in detail.
1. Describe the Permanent Settlement System of
Bengal. Mention the advantages to the British
and the disadvantages the farmers had in it.
Answers
The Advantages and Disadvantages claimed by Contemporary Opinion for the Permanent Settlement of Land Revenue in Bengal, 1793 are given below:
Advantages and Disadvantages
Contemporary opinion claimed a number of advantages for the permanent settlement.
Financially:
The permanent settlement secured a fixed and stable income for the state and the state could depend upon that income, monsoons or no monsoons. Further, it saved the Government the expenses that had to be spent in making periodical assessments and settlements.
Economically:
It was claimed that the permanent settlement would encourage agricultural enterprise and prosperity; Waste land would be reclaimed and the soil under cultivation would improved; the Zamindars would introduce new methods of cultivation like better rotation of crops, use of manure etc. Thus the settlement would create conditions for the development of the fullest Power of the soil. This in turn would create a contented and resourceful peasantry.
Politically, Cornwallis expected that the Permanent settlement should create a class of loyal Zamindars who would be prepared to defend the company at all costs because their rights were guaranteed by the company.
Thus the permanent settlement secured for the government the Political support of an influential class in the same way as the Bank of England had for William III after 1694. The Zamindars of Bengal stood loyal during the great rebellion of 1857. Seton Karr commented that the “Political benefits of the settlement balance its economic defects”.
Socially, the hope was expressed that the Zamindars would out as the natural leaders of the root and shows their public spirit in helping the spread of education and other charitable activities.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Lastly, the permanent settlement of Bengal set free the ablest servants of the company for judicial services. Further it avoided the evils normally associated with the temporary settlements, the harassment of the cultivators, the tendency on the part of the cultivators to leave the land deteriorate towards the end of the term to get a low assessment etc.
Disadvantages:
Whatever little economic or Political purposes the settlement might have served during its first few years, it soon turned into an engine of exploitation and oppression. It created “feudalism at the top and serfdom at the bottom”. Many of the advantages claimed proved to be illusory.
Financially:
The state has proved to be a great loser in the long run. The advantages of a fixed and stable income were secured at the great sacrifice of any prospective share in the increase of revenue from land.
Even when new areas of land were brought under cultivation and the rents of the land already under cultivation had been increased manifold, the state could not claim its legitimate share in the increase. The state demand fixed in 1793 remained almost the same even in 1954.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The permanent settlement retarded the economic progress of Bengal. Most of the landlords did not take any interest in the improvements of the land, but were merely interested in extracting the maximum possible rent from the root.
The cultivator, being under the constant fear of rejectment, had no incentive to improve the land. The Zamindars did not live on the estates, but away in the cities where they wasted their time and money in Luxury.
Thus, the Zamindars became a sort of ‘distant suction pumps’, sucking the wealth of the rural areas and wasting it in the cities. Besides, a host of intermediaries grew up between the state and the actual cultivator.
This process of sub-infatuation sometimes reached ridiculous proportions, there being as many as 50 intermediaries. All the intermediaries looked to their profits and the root was reduced to the position of a pauper. In this context it may be worthwhile to quote the view of Carver who wrote: “Next to war, famine and pestilence, the worst thing that can happen to rural community is absentee landlordism”.
Politically, the permanent sett
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