30 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
“The people of Bengal and of Northern India gradually obtained some relief from the heavy land assessment of the early years of the British rule. In Bengal the assessment was made permanent; and it has not been raised with the extension of cultivation, it now bears (including Road and Public Works assessments, which have been since imposed on the rental) a ratio of about 35 per cent on the rental. In Northern India the assessment was not made permanent, but was reduced to slightly over 50 per cent including all assessments, in 1855. But new assessments were added : calculations were made not on the current, but on the prospective rental until the tax rose to close upon 60 per cent on the rental.”
In Bombay and Madras things remained pretty much the same. In both these Presidencies the Ryotwar Settlement prevails. The working of this Ryotwar system of land tenure during the regime of the East India Company is best described by Mr. Fullerton (member of the Madras Government)— “Imagine,” he says, “the whole landed interest—that is, all the landlords of Great Britain, and even the capital farmers, at once swept away from off the face of the earth : imagine a rent fixed on every field in the kingdom, seldom under, generally above its means of payment: imagine the land so rented, lotted out to the villagers according to the number of their cattle and ploughs, to the extent of forty or fifty acres each. Imagine the revenue rated as above, leviable through the agency of one hundred thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion, according to their idea of the occupant’s means of paying, whether from the produce of his land or his separate property : and in order to encourage every man to act as a spy on his neighbour, and report his means of paying, that he may eventually save himself from extra demand; imagine all the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand, in order to make up for the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. Imagine collectors to every country acting under the orders of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all temptation to labour, by a general equalization of assessment: seizing and sending back runaways to each other: and lastly, imagine the collector, the sole magistrates, or justice of the peace