The meaning of land revenue farming in Indian history has eluded consensus. Some view it as an administrative aberration indicating weak state control, while others see it as a strategy for consolidating authority. This essay traces the historical development of iqṭāʻ and ijārah, two Perso-Arabic terms frequently translated from the sources as “revenue farming estate.” I then suggest that existing perspectives do not capture the broader structure and significance of various entitlements to land revenue. Instead, I suggest that entitlements be schematized according to how regularized the right was, whether it was permanent, and how duty-bound the right holder was. In this formulation, revenue farm refers to a complex of rights and duties secured by contract in which a sovereign transferred the temporary exploitation of a holding for rent in advance. It was one of four tenurial complexes under which entitlements fell, the others being estates from bureaucratic assignment, hereditary occupation or possession by grant/gift, and tributary or chieftaincy.

New Delhi’s “urban villages” are the result of government land acquisitions that began in 1912 and continued into the 1960s. Since the 1980s, growing demand for real estate within the city has engendered unprecedented residential and commercial development in these former agrarian areas. The consequences of this include structural changes in the built environment, shifts in the social make-up of the village, and new relationships with the municipal and planning authorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research between 2010 and 2015, this article examines Hauz Khas, an important archaeological site and urban village in New Delhi. It analyses historical transformations in boundary and land use in the 20th century, and shows how local responses to land acquisitions, city planning, and powerful money networks have created a new politics of urban formation.

Teaching Note for HBS No. 807-028.