RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 143 



from time to time convulsive efforts to shake it off. These efforts must increase in 

 frequency and strength, unless the legislature seriously takes up the evil and applies 

 the knife to it.' 



Assuming, then, that indebtedness to an unusual and extreme 

 extent is the condition of a large proportion of the people in the British 

 Deccan, we must enter into a critical examination of its probable 

 causes before we can hope to apply an effective remedy. These causes 

 are numerous, and complicated both in themselves and in their action 

 and reaction upon each other. They may be conveniently classed as 

 ' normal ' and ' special.' 



The normal causes are those which may be found at work, more or 

 less, at all times, and some in all parts of India, others only in certain 

 localities. First of these stands poverty. It is obvious that where 

 there is a peasant-proprietary, though the stimulus to individual 

 exertion is considerable, and in India the Hindu joint-family system 

 tends to prevent minute subdivision, the individual capital cannot be 

 great, and misfortunes comparatively small will throw even a thrifty 

 and industrious person into the hands of the money-lender for temporary 

 loans. Besides this, the Tcunbi of our Deccan labours under the special 

 disadvantage of a soil mostly indifferent, and a rainfall so precarious 

 that he hardly gets a full crop once in three years. Finally, the 

 obligation to pay a father's debts, laid by Hindu law upon a son with- 

 out any equitable restrictions, imposes a burden oppressive at all 

 times, and too often aggravated by fraud in the creditor and ignorance 

 in the debtor. The Commission, in fact, go so as far as to term 

 ancestral debt the l chief cause ' of the ryot's embarrassments. Next 

 topoverty comes ignorance, which renders the unlettered peasant unable 

 to read and often to understand, the documents aud accounts in 

 which he is vitally concerned, or to state and substantiate in a Civil 

 Court a good defence when he has one, and thus makes him a tempt- 

 ing subject for every kind of roguery. Social observances, such as, 

 marriage, birth and funeral expenses, also swell the roll of obliga- 

 tions ; but being connected with religion, they are to a great extent 

 unavoidable. If occasionally excessive in prosperity, they are reduced 

 in bad times. The Commission consider that in amount they are 

 generally not larger than the ryot's income, if otherwise only fairly 

 taxed, would justify, and that undue prominence has been given to 

 thcm as a cause of his ruin. Improvidence must be admitted to con- 

 tribute its share to the catastrophe ; but it consists, as the Commission 



