Ruling the Countryside

  • Ruling the Countryside – In 1765 Mughal emperor appointed East India Company as the Diwan of Bengal.
  • As diwan of bengal company become the head financial authority of Bengal.
Q. What happened in Bengal after East India Company becoming the diwan of Bengal? (Ruling the Countryside)

Answer:

  • After becoming the diwan of bengal, company started to collect more taxes from the peasants or others.
  • Company started to take more materials with low price and sell in high.
  • peasants were unable to pay taxes whatever demanded by company.
  • Soon great economic crisis occurred in Bengal due to low production because of company’s pressure on cultivators.
Q. What is permanent settlement?

Answer: To secure the profit East India Company included a new system of tax collection in 1793. By this system company fixed an amount of taxes to be paid by the peasants. Here the responsibility of tax collection goes to the rajas and talukders, newly known as Zaminders. This newly formed tax collection system of the year 1793 was known as the permanent settlement.

The company fixed tax amount in this system to ensure their maximum profit and to get continuous flow of revenue.

Q. What were the problems of permanent settlement system of tax collection?

Answer: As the tax amount was high in this permanent settlement system company face so many problems. Which are as follows:

  • So many zaminders lost their power when they failed to collect fixed amount of taxes.
  • Zaminders were not interested to invest more to improve the land.
  • When the agricultural production increased after few decades, the income of zaminders increased only, but not to the company.
  • Due to the low collections of revenue to the company they increased taxes again.
  • With the increasing amount of taxes it becomes more difficult to the peasants to pay taxes. Hence, they took loans from the moneylenders or zaminders and they could not be able to give return by generation to generation.
Q. What do you mean by ‘Mahal’?

Answer: ‘Mahal’ means a village or a group of village. This was the unit of revenue collection to the East India Company. 29