62 GRANT OF LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 



313. It is not necessary to enlarge upon the importance, from t 

 protective point of view, of agricultural improvements generally. 

 The Commission of 1880 drew attention to the matter and suggested, 

 among other reforms, the possibility of "extending the practice of 

 Bombay and Madras to Upper India so far as to rule that the 

 assessment of land irrigated from a permanent well should not be 

 liable to enhancement on account of the well at any revision of the 

 settlement, provided the well is kept in efficient repair." This recom- 

 mendation was embodied in the Bill which afterwards became Act 19 

 of 1883, and was thus referred to by the Hon'ble Member of the 

 Governor General's Council in charge of the Bill during the debate 

 upon it : 



"The section, as it left the hands of the Select Committee, proposed 

 to go even beyond the recommendation of the Famine Commission, 

 and to exempt from increase of assessment profits arising from im- 

 provements effected by the aid of loans taken under this Act, not 

 merely for such periods as would secure to the maker a reasonable 

 return for his investment, but for all time. In those temporarily 

 settled provinces where cultivation has almost reached its natural limits, 

 this principle might perhaps be applied with advantage ; but in others 

 where extensive areas are still awaiting reclamation, which can 

 practically yield no return and pay no revenue until irrigated, the 

 enactment of such a hard and fast rule would result only in a useless 

 sacrifice of the prospective financial resources of the state." 



814. For these reasons the clause which embodied the recom- 

 mendation in question was curtailed; and the profits of those 

 improvements, which consist of the reclamation of waste land, or 

 the irrigation of land assessed at unirrigated rates, are still, in 

 Upper India, exempted from an increase of assessment only for a 

 limited term. 



315. We have carefully considered this question in the light of 

 the grievous misfortunes which have within recent years afflicted 

 Upper India. Our enquiries demonstrate that there is a field for the 

 construction of wells, tanks and other artificial means of irrigation, 

 to which it would be difficult to assign a limit. It has also been 

 forcibly brought home to us as it was to the Commission of 1880 - 

 that the present terms on which these loans are offered do not 

 attract the owners of land to make more than a partial use of the 

 opportunities held out to them. We are convinced that nothing 



