INDEBTEDNESS OF THE LAND-HOLDING CLASSES. 



Relief Acts have applied with the corresponding figures in non-Act 

 districts, and weighing the evidence of the witnesses on the point, 

 we form the conclusion that these Acts have done but little substantial 

 good. Indeed, there is positively room for holding and statistics 

 show that transfers of property, both by sale and mortgage, have 

 become more frequent in districts to which the relief Acts apply. We 

 therefore think that the time for palliative measures has passed, and 

 that the hour has come for recognizing facts as they exist, and for 

 applying those measures which the facts demand, no matter how 

 unwelcome may be the disillusionment that they may bring. 



336. The cultivators, whose names are recorded, may, for the 

 purpose in hand, be divided into three classes : (1) those who have 

 completely lost their lands ; (2) those who have only mortgaged their 

 rights ; and (3) those who are free from debt. We are only concerned 

 with the first and second classes. 



337. It is a curious, but common, practice in Bombay for the 

 money-lender owner to maintain the name of a cultivator of the first 

 class on the village proprietary register, and to keep his own name 

 off it. The motive for such action is suggested in paragraphs 70 and 

 77 of the Report of the Deccan Riots Commission, which also inci- 

 dentally explain why such a large portion of the land revenue in the 

 Bombay Presidency is paid by money-lenders : 



"Instances of the redemption of mortgage are almost unknown ; a mortgage 

 is equivalent to a transfer of the ryot's title, his interest in the mortgaged land, 

 where, as is usual, he remains upon it as cultivating for the mortgagee, being that of 

 a tenant at a rack-rent.* * * The ryot's land is often more valuable as security to 

 the sowlcar than it is an ordinary investment to a purchaser ; for, through the great 

 reluctance of the ryot to sever all connection with his land, the soivkar is able to 

 exact more than the ordinary rent, and, besides, the land is not the only security 

 which the sowlcar holds ; the law gives him command not only over the debtor's 

 movable property, but over his labour and the labour of his family." 



338. Now, we urge that the maintenance of the old owner's name 

 on the register has inconvenient results in many directions. The first 

 of these is that, the register is not a record of actual facts as it should 

 be; and, from this it follows that the demand for the land 

 revenue is made upon a person who is not actually responsible for 

 the payment of it ; that an opportunity is, thus, given for the 

 exercise by untrustworthy subordinate officials of powers which are 

 susceptible of great abuse; that the capitalist owner is exempted from 

 directly bearing those responsibilities which the possession of property 



