Mahalwari Sysrem- It is one of the three main revenue systems of land tenure in British India, the other two being the zamindar (landlord) and the ryotwati (individual cultivator). The word mahalwari is derived from the Hindi mahal, meaning a house or, by extension, a district.For revenue purposes the name was applied to any compact area containing one or more villages, which were called estates.The revenue settlement was made with the estate—hence the term mahalwari—and there were distinct types of assessment. If a zamindar held the whole estate, the settlement was with him; otherwise, payment was exacted from individual cultivators.
Ryotwari System- It is also one of the three principal methods of revenue collection in British India. It was prevalent in most of southern India, being the standard system of the Madras Presidency. The system was devised by Capt. Alexander Read and Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Munro at the end of the 18th century and introduced by the latter when he was governor of Madras. The principle was the direct collection of the land revenue from each individual cultivator by government agents. For this purpose all holdings were measured and assessed according to crop potential and actual cultivation. The advantages of this system were the elimination of middlemen, who often oppressed villagers, and an assessment of the tax on land actually cultivated and not merely occupied. Offsetting these advantages was the cost of detailed measurement and of individual collection. This system also gave much power to subordinate revenue officials, whose activities were inadequately supervised.The name of the system comes from the word ryot, an Anglicization by the British in India of the Arabic word raʿīyah, meaning a peasant or cultivator. The Arabic word passed into Persian and was carried by the Mughals, who used it throughout India in their revenue administration. The British borrowed the word from them and continued to use it for revenue purposes in the Anglicized form. The word has passed into various Indian languages, but in northern India the Hindi term kisan is generally used.
