Abstract
Banerjee and Iyer find that districts which the British assigned to landlord revenue systems systematically underperform districts with non-landlord based revenue systems in agricultural performance, after the onset of the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s. Based on colonial documents, archival research and the work of historians, we correct a mis-interpretation of the land revenue system in Central Provinces, which BI characterise as landlord based. The historical evidence suggests that this region should be attributed to a mixed landlord/non-landlord based revenue system. Using a more appropriate classification, we find no evidence that agricultural performance of Indian districts in the post-independence period was adversely affected by the landlord land revenue system.
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