RIGHT HON. SIR BARTLE FRERE, BART., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., IN THE CHAIR. EAST INDIA ASSOCIATION, 26, CHARING CROSS, S.W. 1883. 2475 PRECIS. INDIA is almost wholly an agricultural country, or rather a country of tillage. The new Bengal Rent Law Bill will decide the fate of about sixty millions. Each year adds alike to the difficulty and the necessity of solving these questions. The spirit of the day is all for improving the condition of the peasantry. The new Bill does not violate the permanent settlement. The advantages to the Bengal landlord are as great as to the cultivator in the new Bill. No time is to be lost. The ryot is learning his rights. The new Bill is not a "confiscation" of rights to the zemindar-but a restoration of rights to the ryots. The ryot can now only obtain redress by going to law; but he is ruined if he goes to law. In three quarters of a century the Government revenue has increased to three and half millions, whilst the zemindar's rental has grown from about a third of a million gross to more than thirteen millions. But this rental of thirteen millions is only an official return for road-cess purposes. The real amount, including illegal exactions, paid annually by the occupants of the soil, is said to be between twenty-five and thirty millions. But taking it at thirteen millions only, the ryots now pay an excessive exaction of £8,273,000 yearly. If this be valued at twenty years' purchase, "we have deprived the "cultivators of this enormous sum of £165,000,000 and given it to the "zemindars, who still cry for more." We have "confiscated" the zemindar's duties, having conferred the land on the sole condition of their performance. "Ryots have been toiling in Madras and starving in the Deccan, in "order that gentlemen in Bengal may enjoy incomes of hundreds of "thousands a year free from taxes." REMEDIES. "If reform does not begin from on high, it will begin from below." That Government is the true friend of the zemindars which gives them prosperous paying tenants, instead of rack-rented runaways The remedies are: (1) Occupancy rights, or fixity of tenure. (2) Fair rents. A complete public record of the holdings of the ryots has yet to be made. (3) If free sale, then the sale to be only to another cultivator. Avoid giving the power of killing the goose which lays the golden eggs. (4) To take from the ryot the power of contracting himself out of his rights. (5) A regular survey. (6) Effective penalties for illegal exactions beyond the rent. (7) Behar: all evils are intensified among these twenty millions of poor low-castes, and require more stringent remedies; also compensation for disturbance; an accurate public register, and a much more active administration. Ryots' meetings in 1881, and ryots' petitions are quoted from. Two indirect remedies are further suggested, (8) Revival of village communities. (9) Encouragement of trades and industries. |