GRANT 01? LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 69 



purposes in the Punjab, United Provinces, and Central Provinces, 

 than in other parts of India. We are far indeed from saying that 

 even in Bombay and Madras the amounts advanced for land improve- 

 ment have been as large as they might have been if the Governments 

 and their officials on the one hand, and the people on the other, 

 had been fully alive to their opportunities. It is worth noting that 

 in Bombay, during the normal years 1893-94-, 1894-95 and 1895-96, 

 out of 18 lakhs advanced, 12 were given in three districts of 

 Belgaum, Dharwar, and Bijapur, of the Southern Division, where 

 vigorous measures had been first started on the initiative of an 

 individual officer who for a series of years administered the collec- 

 torates of Dharwar and Belgaum. Similarly, in the Madras Pre- 

 sidency out of 30 lakhs advanced in the years 1891-92 and 1892-93 

 15 were taken up in the single district of Coimbatore. The years 

 were deficient in rainfall, but Coimbatore was by no means the most 

 severely affected district, and the large amount of takavi taken was 

 largely due to the exertions of the Collector of the time. It is not 

 perhaps too much to say that, the history of the fluctuations in the 

 amounts of takavi taken up in any province, is the history of 

 the interest taken in the matter by individual officers, who were quick 

 to apprehend the kind of improvements which the agriculture of 

 their districts required, and the value of takavi advances as a stimulus 

 to the execution of such improvements as were most suitable to the 

 locality and its needs. Thus the advances in the Bombay districts 

 mentioned were spent chiefly upon the levelling, terracing, and 

 embanking of fields, while in the Coimbatore district of Madras 

 they were spent chiefly on wells. And there can be little doubt that, 

 if all Collectors in Madras and Bombay had taken the same interest 

 in their takavi work as the heads of the districts mentioned, still 

 larger sums would have been advanced throughout the two Pre- 

 sidencies than have yet been given in ordinary years. But if this 

 is the case in Southern India, far more is it so in the Northern 

 Provinces, where so little takavi has been granted up to the present 

 for land' improvement, except in famine years. In this view wo are 

 supported by the local members who have been associated with our 

 Commission. Thus Mu. WILSON thinks the Punjab Government 

 might distribute ten lakhs per annum against the one lakh which it 

 has hitherto given for wells. MR. CRADDOCK would have an expen- 

 diture of four lakhs in the Central Provinces as against a fourth of 



