The Permanent Settlement: How Bengal's Land Tax Created Disaster

In 1793, the British East India Company enacted the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, a land revenue system that would have devastating long-term consequences. This episode explores how Lord Cornwallis and his officials, following ideas from Adam Smith and Philip Francis, froze land taxes forever, creating a class of zamindars who became absentee landlords while peasants sank into debt. We trace the origins of the system in Mughal-era revenue practices, the flawed assumptions about English landlordship, the rise of oppressive intermediaries like the patwari and lathiyal, and the system's role in the Bengal famines. We also discuss the little-known 1799 reform by John Shore that tried to protect peasants, the proliferation of sharecropping and the jotedar class, and how the Permanent Settlement shaped rural Bengal for over 150 years until independence. A story of well-intentioned theory meeting brutal reality, with echoes in Bangladesh's land struggles today.

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