Which of the following statements reflects the ideas of the economist David Ricardo?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → A landowner should have a claim only to the ‘average rent’ that prevailed at a given time.
Option (1) A landowner should have a claim only to the ‘average rent’ that prevailed at a given time. — Correct. This is the starting point of Ricardo’s ideas, which British officials applied when they framed the early revenue settlement in Maharashtra in the 1820s.
Option (2) The state should not tax surplus of the landowner. — Incorrect. Ricardo held the opposite. When the land yielded more than the “average rent”, the landowner had a surplus that the state needed to tax.
Option (3) If tax is levied, cultivators are likely to turn into rentiers. — Incorrect. The statement turns the idea round. It was if tax was not levied that cultivators were likely to turn into rentiers, living on rental incomes, as the zamindars of Bengal seemed to have done.
Option (4) Surplus will be productively invested by the cultivators in the improvement of the land. — Incorrect. Ricardo expected the reverse: an untaxed surplus income was unlikely to be productively invested in the improvement of the land.
NCERT (2026-27): “3.2 A new revenue system … By the 1820s, the economist David Ricardo was a celebrated figure in England. Colonial officials had learnt Ricardian ideas during their college years. In Maharashtra when British officials set about formulating the terms of the early settlement in the 1820s, they operated with some of these ideas. 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. Many British officials in India thought that the history of Bengal confirmed Ricardo’s theory. There the 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.…” |