Deed of hire
Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
A deed of hire was a document from the 19th-century Bombay Deccan. An indebted peasant handed over his carts and bullocks (oxen) to the moneylender to clear part of a debt. Then he took the very same animals back "on hire" and paid the moneylender rent for them. The deed could be enforced in a colonial court. It shows how moneylenders slowly took over the peasant's own tools of farming.
Example
NCERT gives a deed of hire from the Deccan in the years before the 1875 riots. In it, a ryot "sold" his two bullocks and cart to a sahukar (moneylender). He then agreed to pay a yearly rent to keep using them. Even after selling them, he could not farm without them.
Don't confuse with
- Debt bond: an ordinary written loan agreement. A deed of hire turned the peasant into a renter of property that used to be his own.
Related concepts
- David Ricardo
- Ricardian theory of rent
- Rentier
- Bombay Deccan
- Thomas Munro
- Ryotwari system
- Temporary settlement
- Mahalwari system
- Malguzar
- Deccan famine of 1832-34