LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
WHY THERE MUST BE FAMINES IN INDIA.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1 SIR, —I have before me one of those pamphlets with titles unin- telligible to the English reader, and bristling all through with equal unintelligibilities, which frighten off so many of our country- men from Indian subjects, —a "Report from the Sub-committee of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, appointed to collect information to be laid before the East India Finance Committee on matters relating to India." That Committee, as we know, has gone to its grave with the Parliament that appointed it ; any report to be laid before it is addressed to ears that can hear no longer. One's first impression on glancing at such a title-page is to put the pamphlet aside. Especially now, we cannot help fancying that Bengal is and should be the all-engrossing subject for whomsoever can be led to care for anything Indian. Why divert public attention now to Poona? Already amidst the wail of these many millions in the North-East, another cry of famine is coming up from the far South, —from Travancore, and Tinnevelly, and Tanjore,—which is but too likely to pass unheeded. Surely these men of Western India can wait.
It was thus with no favourable impressions that I began looking through the pages of the Report,—issued apparently by a com- mittee of an association of natives in Poona, with branches throughout the country, which committee was appointed " to inquire into the state of the agricultural classes, the pressure of the laud revenue under the old and the new assessments, the increase of local and imperial taxation, and the working of the forest and other departments of revenue." But soon I saw that which made me feel that what I was reading was not out of time or out of place even during a Bengal famine. For it shswed that whilst famine was raging in the North-East of Iudig and was imminent in the South, land was actually going out of cultivation in the West through the pressure of taxation ; that some of the cultivators were being driven to take refuge in neighbouring native states from state-imposed starvation in our own territory ; that a large number of others, though nominally holding land, were subsisting only on the bare wages of their labour ; that, in short, if famine was not yet at hand, man's shortsightedness was pre- paring everything to facilitate its ravages.
It is the old story,—over-assessment, either through the raising of the rate itself, or through over-strictness in its application. What seems to have happened is this. A new revenue settlement has been proceeding on the footing of the vastly enhanced prices of produce which prevailed daring and after the American war. But since then prices have been slowly falling, till they are now nearly equivalent to what they were fifteen years ago. Hence the assessment has become in many instances absolutely crushing to all but the actual cultivators, leaving no return for capital invested ; whilst in other cases, as before mentioned, the cultivators them- selves can no longer obtain a living.
I do not, of course, ignore the difference between Bengal and the Bombay Presidency. In the former, as we know, large pro- prietors hold the land, paying a fixed assessment to the Govern- ment, the soil itself being cultivated by their tenants. In the latter the Government assessment is fixed only from thirty years to thirty years, and most of the actual cultivators hold directly under it. The virtual destruction of private ownership in • laud by such a system—the paramount importance which it gives to fiscal claims—is sufficiently shown by the fact that holdings cease to be known by their local or personal designation, and become mere " numbers " in the assessment-book. And of such " numbers " or holdings wo are told that in one talooka, —call it "parish,"—about 25 " were sold last year by auction for arrears of revenue amounting to rs. 280 (£284s.); with the exception of two numbers, the rest found no purchasers ; and in the column of the remarks against several of them, it is stated that the holders had absconded into the Nizam's Territory from poverty. All these numbers, for whom [sic] no purchasers were found, are now lying waste." In another talooka, "26 numbers, measuring 940 acres, were sold for arrears of rs. 232 (223 4s.), after allowing partial re- missions. Nobody could_be found willing to buy them." In a third, nine numbers, " measuring 228 acres, were sold for arrears of 56 re. (25 12s.), after allowing as much by way of remissions." In a fourth, 15 numbers were sold " for arrears of revenue in the same year, and found no purchasers?' Where sales are effected, the prices received show that the saleable value of the land is reduced to a minimum. In the Indee talooka, 29 holdings belonging to 25 holders were sold in 1872 for arrears; the total assessment was about re. 354 (235 8s.), and the purchase-money only came to about rs. 390 (239), or little more than one year's purchase. In other cases nearly half the revenue has had to be left in arrear.
But this is not all. It is complained that the land revenue, instead of being collected in four instalments as heretofore, is now col- lected in two, and so adjusted that the first has to be paid before the crops are ripe for cutting, so that the cultivator, living, as he does, from hand to mouth, must borrow to pay it ; that waste lands are subjected to tax, that the cultivator is no longer allowed to collect decayed vegetable produce from the jungles and hill-sides (necessary for the growth of rice), or wood from the forests ; that common lands used as grazing-ground are sold off, so that in one talooka famous for its horses, in one village of which there used to be as many as 200 brood mares, there are no horses left ; that a practice, at one time abolished, of requiring security (on stamped paper) from the cultivator for the payment of his assessment (fancy calling on the British taxpayer to give a stamped bond beforehand for payment of his taxes I) has been revived ; that an enormous interest—one half-pie per day on every rupee, or over 95 per cent. per annum—is charged on arrears of land-tax, &c. Meanwhile, it is said that whilst the rains have become more irregular, there has been "sad neglect in utilising and storing up the rain-water In most parts of the country the old reservoirs have been filled up with the silt, and the old aqueducts and canal works have gone to ruin." One grotesque instance of fiscal perversity, no longer towards the agriculturist, must be added : " A tax has been recently levied on the Tanna district from fishermen for drying their fishes on the sea-shore,"--the salt duty having, on the other hand, been increased four times in the last ten years, the first time by 33 per cent.
Now,—without supposing that complaints are universal, or that evidence of a contrary tendency might not be adduced,—noting with regret the leading character of some of the questions addressed to witnesses (" Give examples of oppression practised by executive officers," &c.), —it appears to me, nevertheless, that facts are stated here which are of the utmost consequence to the whole of India. For they show that, notwithstanding what I firmly believe to be the just and benevolent intentions of the Queen's Govern- ment, the revenue administration of India shows a tendency to lapse once more towards that intolerable fiscal oppres- siveness which has ere this well nigh laid waste whole provinces for years (Bundelcund to wit). The authors of the Report speak of the view " that, by the fact of conquest, the rulers of the country have become the absolute proprietors of the land in the same sense in which private individuals are owners of their movable or immovable property, and that as such owner Government is entitled to demand the whole of the rent proper of the land," as "now gaining favour with the ruling classes." We know of old that miserable doctrinairism, which was scourging the North-West into a wilderness, until the thirty years' settle- ment was introduced ; which, according to the testimony of that eminent Governor whom India trained up to heal the sores left by Mr. Eyre's ferocious stupidity in Jamaica, Sir J. P. Grant, rendered n Madras the land valueless, "the contentions there being when a ryot is forced not to give up, but to take land." One bad fain thought it had been extinguished for ever by all the lessons of the past. Yet we see it now in actual effect in Bombay, near to the metropolis of Western India, India's leading gateway for the admission of European influences. Under pressure of the land assessment, taking from the soil the whole profits of cultivation, or within a fraction thereof, land has once more come to sell at a twelvemonth's purchase, or to be unsaleable. And this in the face of a Bengal famine, crying to us, "Set thine house in order!"
Bor remember : Thanks to the permanent settlement of Bengal, land there sells for over twenty years' purchase, and a class of landowners have been raised up who, whether they will it or no, stand always more or less between the cultivator and starvation, aiding him by their necessary expenditure, even if they do not willingly contribute to his wants, or are not compelled by the State to do so, and thus enormously facilitating the task of the State in any emergency like the present. But suppose famine to arise in districts rack-rented by the Government land-tax, no such middle-class exists to share the burthen, which must fall directly with all its crushing weight upon the State. And can you believe that it will keep away ? Does not such rack-renting directly invite it? And in the meanwhile, does it not add negatively to the burthen of the Bengal Famine itself, through every acre that it throws out of cultivation, every sale of cattle or other appliances (the sale of cattle and implements of husbandry for small arrears is one of the complaints in the Report on which I have not had leisure to dwell), through every cultivator whom it reduces to a bare subsistence? And if methods of administration so abort-sighted, so ruinous ultimately, can be practised in Bombay, is there not ground for fear lest they should also be in course of application elsewhere ? To take one instance only,—is it in Bombay alone that the State exacts the monstrous usury of over 95 per cent. per annum on arrears of assessment, or does the exaction apply to all India ?
Lord Salisbury has ere this shown a grasp of Indian subjects, let him look to this one, even without delay. If, in the free countries of the Western world, the rights of individuals are often apt to weigh too heavily in the scales against those of the State, and individual property, in land especially, becomes often on certain questions a very dictator and despot, the case is entirely reversed in these ancient Oriental lands, where the State is traditionally all, and the individual next to nothing. There the rights of the governed, and above all, the right of property in land, whether held solely or in copartnerships, have to be cherished, strengthened, developed in every way, in order to give backbone to the people. The statesman who shall establish, against all the theorising and practice of " whole-rent " doctrinaires, a substan- tial, really valuable right of property in land throughout the length and breadth of India, will confer on her the greatest social boon she has yet received, and one which may result in boundless and ultimate advantage to England herself.--I am, Sir, &c., J. M. L.
(" J. M. L." is absolutely right, but he forgets the Indian Con- stitution. For any reform like this Lord Salisbury is as powerless as himself. The Council is absolute, and to convince the Council, you must burn it up. Artillery is wasted on cotton-bales.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
