ABSTRACT
In the year 1784, the Act for the ‘Better Regulation and Management of the Affairs of the East India Company’ was passed by the Houses of Parliament. In 1786 a new system of administration was evolved, the plan of which appears to have been worked out or developed by Shore. The scheme aimed at complete decentralization; it involved the division of the whole of the provinces into small districts; and the Committee of Revenue merely retained a general power of sanction and control. The process of rendering the districts more compact continued until 1793, but the system evolved by Shore, based on a series of compact districts subject only to the general control of the Board of Revenue, has formed the basis of all subsequent administration. The reforms of 1786 laid the foundations on which the Permanent Settlement subsequently rested, and it is the revenue system then adopted, that led to any success that may have attended the Permanent Settlement.
