1G2 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



this, as well as sufficient food to last the cultivator till 

 his crop is ready, is generally borrowed in kind, the 

 arrangement being that double the quantity borrowed 

 shall be repaid at harvest time. As grain is cheaper at 

 harvest than at seed time, this does not quite represent 

 a hundred per cent, interest ! Such rates of interest 

 seem high, but the risk of such speculations is very great, 

 the principal being not seldom lost altogether. The 

 short-sighted policy long followed by our legislature, 

 which rendered the recovery of such debts a matter of 

 the greatest difficulty and uncertainty, greatly aided in 

 maintaining these rates of interest. This policy is not 

 even yet extinct, there being, in the Central Provinces 

 at least, a rule which prohibits procedure against the 

 farm-stock of a debtor, although it may all have been 

 purchased with the borrowed money to recover which 

 execution is souo-ht. 



It is obvious that transactions of this nature are 

 really of the nature of a partnership between the 

 labourer and the capitalist, the former furnishing 

 nothing but his personal labour and supervision. Some- 

 times the partnership takes a more explicit form, when 

 the man of money furnishes the oxen against the 

 manual labour of the cultivator. All the other ex- 

 penses, including the wages of the cultivator's family, 

 if he has any, are deducted from the gross produce 

 of the farm, with interest to the capitalist if he has 

 advanced any part of such expenditure, and the balance 

 is then divided equally between the owner of the oxen 

 and the cultivator. In either case the result usually 

 is that all the profit, beyond the bare wages his labour 

 would fetch in the market, is absorbed by the man that 

 supplies the money and takes the risk. But the culti- 



