Structural changes in the credit market and land transfer rights pushed Bengal into recurring danger of famine and dictated which economic groups would suffer greatest hardship. The British Indian system of land tenure, particularly in Bengal, was very complex, with rights unequally divided among three diverse economic and social groups: traditional absentee large landowners or zamindars; the upper-tier "wealthy peasant" jotedars; and, at the lower socioeconomic level, the ryot (peasant) smallholders and dwarfholders, bargadars (sharecroppers), and agricultural labourers. Zamindar and jotedar landowners were protected by law and custom, but those who cultivated the soil, with small or no landholdings, suffered persistent and increasing losses of land rights and welfare. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the power and influence of the landowners fell and that of the jotedars rose. Particularly in less developed regions, jotedars gained power as grain or jute traders and, more importantly, by making loans to sharecroppers, agricultural labourers and ryots. They gained power over their tenants using a combination of debt bondage through the transfer of debts and mortgages, and parcel-by-parcel land-grabbing.
