DEFECTS OF THE METAYER SYSTEM 49 



'The conditions on which the peasantry now live 

 and till the soil are adverse to any solid progress. As 

 long as the landlord can come into the field, on the 

 threshing-floor, and take away half the tenant's 

 harvest, so long will the tenant grudge any labour 

 beyond that which is necessary to raise his food. 

 The great incentive to industry is wanting. He 

 knows that the more he toils the more he will have 

 to yield to his landlord. In the Bilari pargannah 

 rents are in money, and the rates paid are (now) 

 undoubtedly high ; but a Bilari Jat* would laugh 

 anyone to scorn who would suggest a change to even 

 the most lenient batai' 



Similarly, Mr. W. H. Smith in the Aligarh Settle- 

 ment Report (1874) says: 'Mr. Thornton . . . very 

 rightly called batai equally " a sign and a cause of 

 inferiority of produce " ; it is a sign because it only 

 obtains on bad land, and it is a cause because no 

 cultivator cares to devote much time or labour when 

 he is conscious that so comparatively small a share 

 of the resulting produce will fall to his share. The 

 invariable tendency of batai is to produce careless and 

 thriftless cultivation.' 



There is another very practical difficulty in carrying 

 out the actual division of the grain harvest, which 

 must always have favoured the introduction of kankut, 

 and eventually led the way to cash rents, and that is 

 the difficulty which a landlord, with many tenants, 

 must have experienced in superintending the division 

 of the crop on many distant threshing-floors within a 

 reasonable time after the harvest. Mr. Moens, who 

 undertook the defence of batai^ states this objection to 

 it very fairly : f 



* It directly tends to promote fraud and cheating of 

 every description. The cultivators endeavour and 



* The Jats are notoriously sturdy and hard-working cultivators, 

 t ' Report on the Settlement of the Bareilly District, 1874,' 

 S. M. Moens. 



