[Extracts from the Famine Commission'* Report, 1880.] 

 (Fart II, Chapter III, Section IV. Pages 130-136.) 



No subject has been more strongly and frequently pressed on our 

 attention than the evil results which spring from the degree to which 

 the landowners are sunk in debt, the asserted rapid increase of their 

 indebtedness, and the difficulty they find in extricating themselves 

 from such burdens. In some parts of India, notably in the four 

 districts of the Bombay Deccan and in the Jhansi district, their 

 indebtedness has become so grievous that the Government has 

 recently been led to take special steps for their rescue, and in other 

 parts it has, at different times, intervened to protect special classes 

 whose ruin, otherwise unavoidable, it was thought necessary, on political 

 grounds, to ward off. On a topic which has been so long and 

 earnestly debated by every Indian administrator of importance it 

 is difficult to make any new suggestion. It was fully discussed last 

 year in the Council of the Governor-General of India, and remedial 

 measures were adopted which are still only in an experimental stage, 

 so that we can offer no conclusion based on the result of their actual 

 operation ; but the subject is one of such gravity that the Famine 

 Commission have felt bound to give it their most careful consideration: 



2. We have found no reason to believe that the agricultural popula- 

 tion of India have at any known period of their history been generally 

 free from debt, although individuals or classes may have fallen into 

 deeper embarrassments under the British rule than was common 

 under the Native dynasties which preceded it. It has been usual for 

 the landholders in all times habitually to have transactions with the 

 money-lender of their village, with whom they carry on a running 

 account on friendly terms, taking from him advances for seed and 

 food in the months preceding the harvest and handing over to him 

 the greater part of their produce, from the money proceeds of which 

 he pays their dues to the State and places any balance to their credit. 

 Under this arrangement the ignorant cultivator was relieved of much 

 trouble and responsibility, and his payments to the Government were 

 conducted for him by the money-lender or village-headman. His 

 account might run on amicably for a long series of years unless 

 extravagant expenditure on family ceremonies, or a failure of the 



