5 GRANT OF LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 



circumstances are personally known. But care should be taken to 

 avoid falling into excess in doing this. There could be no greater 

 encouragement to unthrift and recklessness among the agriculturists 



O O O 



than the knowledge that they have no need to accumulate capital to 

 meet any misfortune that may befall them, but that they can always 

 rely on obtaining from the Government the money they require on 

 comparatively easy terms. The landed classes are only too prone to 

 enter into any contract for the future which will relieve them from 

 present pressure, and this tendency would be stimulated if the 

 Government, as a rule, lent money except for the object of a definite 

 and permanent improvement of the land. 



Improvements not to be the ground for increased 



assessments. 



6. In addition to the difficulties mentioned in para. 2 of this 

 section as arising out of the working of the rules made under the 

 Act, another reason has been prominently alleged for the disinclina- 

 tion of landowners to spend money, whether their own or borrowed, 

 on the improvement of the land, and that is their doubt whether at 

 the expiration of a term of settlement they will be allowed to enjoy 

 the whole profits of such an improvement, or whether it will form 

 the occasion for an enhancement of their assessment. In the Punjab 

 it is a rule of the revenue system that constructors of new wells 

 should be protected for 20 years from enhancement on account of the 

 irrigation thus provided, and that repairers of old wells and diggers 

 of water-courses should be similarly protected for 10 years. In the 

 North- Western Provinces, Oudh, and the Central Provinces no 

 definite rule appears to have been laid down. In Berar and Madras, 

 rules have been issued providing that the assessment on lands on 

 which wells or other improvements have been constructed by the 

 owners or occupants at their own cost shall not be enhanced at a 

 future settlement, except on the ground of a general revision of the 

 district rates. But these rules have not the force of law, and in the 

 Bombay Presidency alone has this understanding been embodied in an 

 Act. We think it important that a precise and permanent under- 

 standing should be come to on the subject and ratified by law. The 

 landowner should be guaranteed against any enhancement of his ' 

 assessment for such a period as shall secure to him such a reasonable 

 return on his investment as will encourage the prosecution of improve- 

 ments. It appears to be quite possible to draw up a set of rules 



