RAS question
The Mahalwari System of land revenue was introduced in:
Correct answer: (B) North-Western Provinces, Punjab, and parts of Central India.
The Mahalwari System of land revenue was introduced in the North-Western Provinces, Punjab, and parts of Central India.
Explanation
The Mahalwari System was introduced by Holt Mackenzie in 1822 and later refined by Lord William Bentinck. It applied to the North-Western Provinces, Punjab, and parts of Central India, with the North-Western Provinces covering much of present-day Uttar Pradesh. Its core feature was village-based assessment: the estimated revenue of each plot was added up to calculate what the village, or mahal, had to pay. Unlike the Permanent Settlement, this demand was revised periodically instead of being fixed forever. Collection was also routed through the village headman or lambardar, who collected revenue from individual cultivators and paid it to the government, so the village functioned as the revenue unit.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Madras and Bombay are associated with the Ryotwari System, where settlement was made directly with cultivators rather than with the village as a mahal.
- (C) Bengal and Orissa point to the Permanent Settlement, not the Mahalwari System, because Bengal had a permanently fixed revenue demand under zamindars.
- (D) Assam and Burma did not form the standard Mahalwari region named for this land-revenue arrangement and followed different administrative systems.
Concept
This tests the colonial land-revenue systems under Company rule: Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari. It recurs in RAS because region-system matching is a high-yield way to test modern Indian economic history.