By: Mohd Amin Mir
In the quiet corners of rural Kashmir, two important but forgotten systems of local revenue collection—Chola and Aabiyana—are slowly fading into oblivion. Both have been essential to our agrarian history, rooted in the idea that those who benefit from public services must contribute modestly to their upkeep. Yet today, neither is properly collected, nor formally abolished. They simply exist in a shadowy, dysfunctional limbo.
Chola is the fee that was traditionally collected by lumberdars—village-level revenue intermediaries who acted as the government’s eyes and ears in the countryside. It was a token contribution from farmers, given in return for the lumberdar’s services: relaying government orders, resolving disputes, maintaining local order, and assisting revenue officials.
On the other hand, Aabiyana was the irrigation fee—charged to farmers for using water from canals managed by the Irrigation Department. Both were never meant to be burdensome. They were symbolic of a shared civic responsibility. Yet today, on the ground, they are ghostly remnants of a past that our bureaucracy neither wants to preserve nor reform Take a stroll through any village in Anantnag, Pulwama, or parts of Jammu, and ask farmers about Chola or Aabiyana. You will likely be met with puzzled looks. “Who collects that now?” they’ll ask.
The answer is: no one, or at best, someone who does it arbitrarily. Chola is collected irregularly, often without receipts or official rates. In one village, a lumberdar might charge Rs. 20 per kanal. In another, Rs. 300 per household. In most villages, it’s not collected at all. There’s no annual verification, no digital record, and no clarity on where the money goes. Meanwhile, lumberdars—once pillars of rural administration—are left demoralized and unpaid. The situation with Aabiyana is no better. The Irrigation Department still maintains handwritten registers from decades ago. There are no demand notices, no online portal for payment, no linkage with land records. Many junior engineers and canal patwaris are too overburdened or ill-equipped to conduct regular verification.
In some places, even identifying who uses canal water has become guesswork. What’s being lost here is not just a few rupees, but a system of accountability, rural discipline, and civic engagement. . It has real consequences. First, there’s a massive revenue loss. Collectively, Chola and Aabiyana could fetch crores annually—money that could be used for canal repairs, rural roads, or disaster resilience.
Instead, we let that stream dry up. Second, the erosion of local institutions is palpable. Lumberdars, who once kept villages tied to the state, now float in a sea of irrelevance. Without official mandates or collection duties, they have no incentive—or dignity—left in their role. Third, the absence of irrigation usage data weakens water planning.
With climate stress and growing water scarcity, it is critical to know who is using how much water, and for what crops. Without Aabiyana records, we are flying blind. Fourth, and most worryingly, the public trust in governance erodes when the state fails to do something as basic as collecting nominal, lawful fees transparently. The blame lies in policy stagnation.
The J&K Land Revenue Act still talks about revenue recovery but is silent on modern mechanisms for Chola or irrigation charges. There is no clear order standardizing the Chola fee, nor any coordination between revenue and irrigation databases. Worse, in some districts, the lumberdari system has been scrapped quietly without building a better alternative.
The irrigation department, meanwhile, has not rationalized Aabiyana rates to account for fragmented landholdings or modern irrigation techniques. Most of its offices are not digitally integrated with tehsil revenue records, making cross-verification almost impossible. What we are left with is a dead system—neither operational nor officially closed—simply gathering dust in the files of forgotten departments It doesn’t take a revolution to fix this. It just takes clear vision, small investments, and political will. Here are a few modest, actionable reforms:
- Notify Standard Chola Rates across districts. Let it be Rs. 20 per kanal or Rs. 300 per household, but make it official and uniform. Issue receipt books or apps for lumberdars to collect and deposit the amount transparently.
- Digitize Aabiyana Records and link them with jamabandis and khasra girdawaris. Let farmers log in online to check their dues and pay them via UPI, like any other utility bill.
- Redefine the Role of Lumberdars. Let them become digital facilitators of revenue services—equipped with smartphones, trained to collect dues, report grievances, and verify canal usage. Give them a modest honorarium to revive their dignity.
- Run Pilot Projects in a few model villages. Test mobile-based collection, data integration, and public transparency. Once successful, replicate across the UT.
- Public Disclosure of Payments. Like MGNREGA job cards, display lists of who paid and who didn’t at the Panchayat Ghar annually. Community pressure works better than government notices.
- Create Joint Verification Teams from the revenue and irrigation departments to monitor water usage and update rolls annually.
- Offer Incentives—like Aabiyana discounts—for farmers using drip irrigation or rainwater harvesting, linking revenue with sustainability.
- Audit Every 3 Years. Let a university or civil society group review the system periodically and publish its findings. Transparency is the best disinfectant. These steps are neither expensive nor politically controversial. They only need execution. At a time when Jammu & Kashmir is investing heavily in land record digitization, rural development, and Panchayati Raj institutions, it makes little sense to ignore these grassroots revenue mechanisms. Chola and Aabiyana are not colonial relics. They are tools of community participation and administrative order. To abandon them without reform is to admit failure in grassroots governance. Let us not forget—governance is not only about big-ticket projects. It is also about collecting Rs. 20 fairly, issuing a receipt, and keeping a record. That, too, is democracy. The next time we lament the decay of rural institutions or the poor maintenance of canals, we must ask: are we even trying to collect what is due? Are we empowering the very people meant to sustain these services? Chola and Aabiyana may sound outdated. But reform them, digitize them, and root them in transparency—and they will become symbols of a smarter, more inclusive state. Let’s not allow these quiet pillars of our rural economy to fall in silence.
Mohd Amin Mir is a columnist focusing on land administration, rural governance, and institutional reform in Jammu & Kashmir.
