30 



BELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 



the separate minutes or memoranda which had been recorded by some 

 of the members of the Commission. Foremost amongst the causes of 

 the existing complications were (1) unfavourable conditions of soil 

 and climate; (2) increase of population in excess of any increase in 

 the local supply of means of supporting such population ; (3) the 

 obligations of ancestral debt ; and (4) the money-lender's custom of 

 inordinately enhancing the original debt by charges of compound 

 interest at high rates, and constant exaction from the debtor of fresh 

 bonds or other instruments of obligation. 



An additional recorded cause of the general increase of debt 

 amongst the ryots of late years was the greater facility of obtaining 

 credit on inadequate security, brought about through the more active 

 prosecution of the money-lending business by a lower class of sowkars. 

 * * * * * As the 



ryots in these districts held their lands under direct engagement 

 with the Government, the possible connection of the revenue system 

 with, and its partial responsibility for, the poverty and embarrass- 

 ments of the people became an important subject of enquiry. The 

 report of the Commission, whilst it did not show that the assessment 

 of the land fixed at the latest revision of settlements pressed with 

 undue harshness upon the ryots, expressed the opinion that, in the 

 peculiar conditions of the Deccan, as regards climate and the 

 productive capacity of the soil, the fixity of the Government 

 revenue demand operated adversely to the direction of keeping 

 the cultivator free from the need of recourse to borrowing. A more 

 elastic system under which the demand would better correspond in 

 point of time with his own realization of profit from the land, 

 without at the same time introducing to too great an extent the 

 element of uncertainty as to the amount of the demand, would, it 

 was represented, be more suitable to the exigencies of the case. 

 The present state of the law relating to the administration of 

 justice and the procedure of the Civil Courts, in so far as it 

 governed or affected the dealings between the sowJcars and the 

 ryots, was fully considered and dwelt upon in much detail in the 

 report of the Commission. It was held that the difficulties of the 

 ryot had been greatly increased in his earlier borrowing transactions 

 with the money-lender through the change in the Law of Limitation 

 as regards the period allowed for suing on contract-debts which was 

 introduced by the Act of 1859, Previous to the operation of that 



