7'2 GRANT OF LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 



with remarkable punctuality. But he has also to pay an instalment o 

 principal which, if his crops are poor, may be a considerable burden. 

 The Collector or head of the district has authority, under the rules in 

 all provinces, to suspend payment on the occurrence of failure of crops 

 or other exceptional calamity, subject, however, to a report to higher 

 authority. But this power of suspension is not very frequently exer- 

 cised, except in years of very geneial failure of crops ; and when it is, 

 the result is merely to postpone payment of the instalment for a single 

 season, with the result that in the ensuing year the cultivator has to 

 pay double the usual amount. The increased payment must often be 

 raised with difficulty, and it is probable that under the circumstances, 

 cultivators would seldom care to apply for suspension of takavi pay- 

 ments. We are of opinion that, suspension should be given without 

 hesitation whenever, from causes beyond the control of the borrower, 

 his crops fail to such an extent as to render the payment of the year's 

 instalment unduly burdensome to him ; that whenever suspensions of 

 revenue are granted, they should carry with them automatically suspen- 

 sions of the takavi instalment which may be due the same year ; that 

 the officer who has authority to grant the loan should also have 

 authority to grant the suspensions ; and that the suspended instalment 

 should not be made payable in the ensuing year with the instalment 

 of that year, but that the effect of suspension should be to postpone 

 by one year the payment of all remaining instalments due on the loan. 

 It seems also unnecessary for the head of the district to report each 

 case of suspension, as it occurs, to superior authority. Greater leniency 

 in the matter of recovery cannot well be exercised by Government, 

 which in these matters is unable to place itself in the same position 

 as a private creditor. 



192. Period of repayment. There is, however, a measure which 

 would undoubtedly go far to mitigate the hardship of rigid recovery, and 

 that is the lengthening of the periods of repayment. In several places 

 these periods have been criticised as too short. But opinion is not 

 unanimous on the point, many witnessses considering that the people are 

 perfectly satisfied with the periods allowed. It is remarkable what a 

 reluctance there appears to be to work up to the full period of thirty- 

 five years allowed by law. Except in Madras, where the period for 

 wells is fixed at thirty years, in no province may the Collector fix a 

 period longer than twenty years, while in Bengal his discretion is 

 limited to ten, and in the Central Provinces and United Provinces, to 



