Recardo

. Explain how the Ricardo’s idea of land ownership was introduced in the Bombay Deccan’? All India 2013

Ans. The colonial officials were under the influence of the ideas of David Ricardo.

He was a renowned economist of England during the early decades of the 19th century.

He suggested that a landowner should have a claim only to the ‘average rent’ prevailing at the time.

According to him, when the land yielded more than this average rent, the landowner had asurplus that the state needed to tax. If tax was not levied, cultivators were likely to turn into rentiers and their surplus income was unlikely to be productively invested in the improvement of the land.

The British officials viewed that the same condition had arisen in Bengal because of the introduction of Premanent settlement. The zamindars in Bengal had become rentiers in a way as they had leased out their lands. Therefore, the British officials wanted to follow a different system of land revenue.