Explain David Ricardo’s ideas of rent of land.

When in India the British officials derived land revenue policies, their thinking was deeply shaped by renowed economist named David Recardo. By the 1820s the economist David Recardo was a figure in England.Colonial officials had learnt Ricardian ideas during their college years. According to Ricardian ideas, a landowner should have a claim only to the average rent that prevailed at a given time. When the land yielded more than this ‘average rent’ the landowner had a surplus 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.

In Maharashtra when British officials set about formulating the terms of the early settlement in the 1820s, they operated with some ideas of Recardo.

Several British officials working in India thought that the history of Bengal confirmed Ricardo’s theory. There are zamindars seemed to have turned into rentiers, leasing out land and living on the rental incomes. It was therefore necessary, the British officials now felt, to have a different system.