Word: zamindar
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...zamindar, a baron, and his ancestors for centuries before him were zamindars. In his youth he lived carelessly on inherited wealth, imagining that it would last forever. But the rising middle class was not careless, and soon some of the zamindar's neighbors were richer than he. Partly to assert his superiority, partly to gratify his passion for music, he took to regaling his acquaintances at lavish musical evenings. When his dutiful wife warned him that it was costing too much to pay the piper, he waved her away. "If I cut corners I shall lose face...
Originally, the Indian zamindar (land agent) was a creature of the Turks, who ruled India in the 13th century. His function was simply to skim off a fat slice (often 50%) of the peasant soil-tiller's earnings, keep a cut for himself, and turn the rest over to his superior on the feudal ladder. Under the Moguls, who followed the Turks, India's peasants were systematically exploited but rarely dispossessed...
Unconcerned. Then came Britain's merchant conquerors. The squires of the East India Co. kicked out the petty princelings and chieftains of the earlier regimes, and appointed their own zamindars from a hodgepodge of ex-rulers, bandits and local opportunists. Their only duty was to pay a fixed revenue each year to the new government. What they collected from the peasants or how they collected it was of no concern to the British. The zamindar imposed taxes at will-to pay for his daughter's wedding, his wife's funeral, his son's birth...
Uttar Pradesh's 12 million peasants will henceforth pay taxes direct to the government. They may no longer be evicted from the land they till, even though a zamindar claims it. Those willing to pay ten years of taxes in advance will be granted full ownership of their plots, including the right to sell. Meanwhile, the 2,000,000-odd dispossessed zamindars of Uttar Pradesh, many of them only small holders themselves, will be paid for their lost lands at a rate eight times the land's annual tax value...