September i, 1885,] THE TROPICAL AGtHCULTURTSt. 



163 



excise duty alone at 63. SJ. per gallon would have, on 

 the waste product, exceeded £20,000, a sum of money 

 which, iu view of the present depletion of the Treasury, 

 would have helped materially to swell the receipts of 

 the colouy. — Mackai/ Stayuianl. 



ENGLISH FARMING IN INDIA. 



Talking with an Indinn zemindar (laudetl proprietor) 

 the other day. this man, a Hindu, remarked: — "Iwouder 

 EngHsh capitalists do not buy up laud iu Southern India 

 and farm it on their own account. They will put their 

 money into Indian gold mines that wou't return the'n 

 one per cent, when the land would give them twenty." 

 And when 1 inquired why native capitalists did not euter 

 on such a profitable pui'suit, he answered curtly, "They 

 can get 60 per cent on usury." which is very true. The 

 great wants of the land in Southern India are water and 

 manure. The ryots, or peasant farmers, are too poor, 

 and generally too much involved in debt, to dig wells, or 

 to do anything that costs money in the way of irrig- 

 ation, and they burn their cowdung for fuel, con- 

 sequently the land gets no fair play. Moreover, they never 

 infuse fresh seed into their crops; indeed, they are only 

 too thankful to get any seed at a>U. and, of course, buy 

 the cheapt-st and the worst that is to be had in the 

 market. As for ploughing, they simply scratch the sur- 

 face of the soil with an implement that looks like a 

 wooden anchor; but then their half-starvetl draught bull- 

 ocks can do no more — so much is all that can be expected 

 of them. Despite bad years, debts, difficulties, and tax- 

 ation, an Indian zemindar on a large scale is usually 

 worth money ; some of them are enormously rich, so that, 

 however they do it, they make farming pay. 



I believe with my friend the zemindar that a large 

 property in Southern lu'lia in such districts as Coimbatore, 

 or Godavery, or indeed anywhere that water was easily 

 obtainable would pay a .S\nidicate or Company able to 

 expend a considerable capital upon it, and this, too, 

 though I know of sugar estates taken up by Europeans 

 that have failed miserably. The fact is, that these 

 failures were left to native management, and nothing in 

 India left to native management will pay, whether it be 

 a State, a regiment, a property, a business, or what not. 

 Supervision by Europeans is absolutely essential to the, 

 success of anj^hing in India; because peculation is rifer 

 and no native seems to see the fun of working fo 

 another person so long as he is paid for doing so. Active 

 European supervision will, however, produce wonderful 

 results if combined with capital, and I confess I am 

 carious to see what would be the residt of good farming 

 by experienced men in the South of India. "We all know 

 that lar^e fortunes have been made by indigo planters 

 in Btngal; but the South of India will also grow indigo, and 

 sugar, tobacco, grain, oil-seeds, and other produce of great 

 value. Euglishmen, nevertheless, have never, to any extent, 

 gone iu for farming on the plains; they have limited 

 their enterprize to coffee, tea, and chinchona planting on 

 the mountains. Not that the climate need deter them. 

 It is the same climate in which Government civilians 

 and military men have to work, and no hotter than 

 many parts of Australia in the summer. 



There is a Government model farm at Sydapett, 

 near Madras, where fancy crops are grown ; but a Govern- 

 ment model farm will hardly serve as a criterion of 

 what a syndicate might do with fifty or sixty thousand 

 acres of zeniindaree land. But it is first necessary to 

 describe what that land is. It is, generally speaking, 

 quite unlike an estate at home — unless, perhaps, in the 

 vrilds of Ireland. There are no hedges or fences to speak 

 of unless round a standing crop, and not always then, 

 and the estate may be a vast i>laiD, more or less sandy, 

 dotted with patches of grain, such as cholum and raggy, 

 for dry land, and with bright green paddy for wet. 

 The trees will be chiefly palmyra^s, cocoanuts, according 

 to the distance fr-)m the sea, and there will be a pro- 

 digious acreage of scrub jungle, otherwise waste land. 

 It is n»t because the land is worthless, but because the 

 native farmer has not the money to cultivate it. He is 

 over head and earsiu debt to tlie village Shylock. and why 

 should ho cultivate more land when all the profits must 

 go into the pockets of Old Sixty per Cent ? AVhy, indeed, 



should he do more than just get the handful of graia 



that keeps him ali^'e, because anything more than this 

 would go to the local money-lender and the landlord 

 together. But it does not follow from this that the land 

 is not good laud, and capable of producing l;u-^e crops. 

 Most likely, if it was properly cultivated, and got soma 

 of that manure it now never sees from one generatioa 

 of agriculturist's to another, it would give as good a 

 return as those prairies in the West of Ameiica w8 

 hear so much of, and it has this advantage over Anu^rican 

 land, that labour is abundant, and ridiculously cheap. 

 Even the great and rich zemindars, like my friend, do 

 not do justice to their land. Not one of them would 

 ever think of spending a rupee on its improvement if 

 the expenditure could be avoided, and a zemindar who 

 drew, say, ten thousand rupees annually from his estate, 

 would think himself a fool to try and make it, putting 

 money in the land, twenty thousand. It is here that 

 Europeans would have the pull over natives. They would 

 improve, and their profits would increase, whereas the 

 natives standstill, spend their returns in foolish doniestio 

 ceremonies, costing all they have, run iuto debt, and are 

 ruined whenever a bad year overtakes them. 



I don't think there woidd be any great hardship for 

 Europeans in supervising an Indian estate. They would 

 have servants and luxuries of all kinds tliat the Colorado 

 or New Zealand colonist knows nothing of. And they 

 would have plenty of sport and regular employnient; 

 what more need they wish P The indigo planter's life 

 used to be considered the pleasantest in India, and etpially 

 profitable crops ought to give as much happiness as the 

 blue dye of commerci.^ But, of course, experience of 

 natives, and native ways, would be essential ; at last to 

 ensure the profits of the estate. As for the estate itself, 

 I fancy, that a good large zemindaree could be purchased 

 in one of the districts I have mentioned on very favour- 

 able terms, owing to the impecuniosity of the zemindars 

 as a class, and to the famines in past times, which have 

 plunged many of them into debt. I don't mean Govern- 

 ment waste lands, of which plenty could be had for a 

 trifle; because to clear land would never pay; but to 

 laud now under crops (i^) save the mark! with a view 

 only to improvement. My idta is that the English 

 capitalist would make two blades of grass grow where the 

 native grows one ; and it is not to be forgotten that 

 there is a ready market on the spot for whatever is 

 grown, be it grain or grass. There is not the disadvant- 

 age of having to export one's grain. India is so densely 

 populated that the food is insufficient as it is. 



I hardly know what the ditiicult might be with the 

 Brahmins, the ryots, and native neighbours at first, but 

 probably not much, beciu'^e capital. smooths everything 

 in India. The syndicate of 50,000 actes would be respected, 

 and if not, why the law is at hand, unlike the prairies 

 of America, where there is sometimes no redress. And 

 natives, generally, are beginning to see their profit iu 

 the investment of British capital in such enterprises as 

 manufactories, and would no doubt, be equally glad to 

 see English money invested iu agriculture. There are some 

 crops, indeed, which it is almost impossible to bri ig to 

 perfection without a greater outlay than the half-starved 

 Indian cultivator can atford. Tobacco imligo, sugur, all 

 require capital, and the ryot lives frtim hand to mouth. 

 But wherever money is expended on the land, and nn^nure 

 and water applied to it, the crops will be found magni- 

 ficent: the pity is that it is oidy in the neighbour- 

 hood of large towns and irrigating channels that one 

 commonly sees anything of the sort. A syndicate would, 

 of course, take up land along the bank of some large 

 river, and would dig wells if necessary. In this way there 

 would bo a good command of water, and all the manure 

 of the stock, as well as perhaps the sewage of adjacent 

 town** or villages would be applied to the land. The 

 stock alone should prove a source of profit to an English 

 farmer in India, because the natives are singularly 

 apathetic about breeding cattle, and their acquaintanco 

 with the veterinary art is so poor that they are always 

 losing their stock by preventible or curable disease. The 

 improvement of Indian cattle and sheep by ^ judicious 

 crossing with the South American and Australian breeds 

 is a legitimate speculation, and one that would prove 

 highly profitable to an ^Inglo-Indiau farmer who under- 



