Agrarian Changes:

Agrarian Changes:
In pre-colonial India, the zamindars were only tax farmers and could not extract the rent as matter of course through the ordinary legal channels. The peasant had hereditary and customary rights over land cultivation. However, these relation- ships changed radically with the advent of the British. The British decision to recognise the concept of individual ownership aimed at creating an enterprising and loyal class of landlords.Whether in the case of Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793, or the Ryotwari system that came into force in Madras, Bombay and the Punjab some decades later, the underlying principle was the idea of individual ownership. Land became the property of the individual. The feudal structure turned into semi feudal.This policy paid rich dividends to the British in form of increased and stabilised revenues and a loyal landed aristocracy, but posed sharply the landlord-peasant problem. While the Ryohvari peasant faced exorbitant rates of revenue, the zamindari peasant suffered unprecedented oppression. Between 1800 and 1810, rents nearly doubled. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, himself a Bengal zaminder, admitted that the conditions of cultivators had not improved although the income of the proprietors had increased. The government conferred on the zamindras powers to confiscate the property and arrest the cultivator, leaving him no other means of redress against the illegal or unjust confiscation or arrest. The civil courts could do little because the settlement was made with no previous survey, on record of rights and without even a define method of assessment. The zamindars' domination became an accepted fact to such an extent that the tenants who, in theory had substantial occupancy rights became tenants at will.The burden of revenue led them into the firm grip of the moneylender and also towards cash crop cultivation which had disastrous consequences. The pauperisation and appalling condition on the peasantry were echoed in Lord Cornwallis statement, when he said: 'I may safely assert that one third of the Company's territory in Hindustan is now a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts, which once was bustling with cultivators'.