Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India

Abstract

We document the impact of a specific historical institution on long-term development outcomes, by performing a comparative analysis of the different land tenure systems put in place by British colonial administrators in India. The main comparison is between areas which were historically under the control of big landlords (and consequently had much higher levels of historical land inequality) with areas which were historically under the control of small cultivators or village bodies. The historical record shows that the choice of alternative systems was driven by the prevailing ideology in England at the time of conquest, as well as the idiosyncratic views and relative political power of individual colonial administrators, and therefore does not reflect some underlying features of these areas.