RACK-RENTING 57 



made in his grain-heaps than he had anticipated ; and 

 if you ask him whither it has all gone he is just as 

 bewildered as you are, and just as unable to tell. 

 Havildars' wages, weighing expenses, village ex- 

 penses, that fiction so dear to landlords, transit 

 expenses, nazr bhent* and food of attendants make 

 away with most of what would have been the tenant's 

 little profit. Where kankut is the custom, the burden 

 on the cultivator is still greater. He has to bear the 

 cost of a couple of landlord's agents, sometimes also 

 the landlord himself, a couple of kanias or appraisers, 

 a couple of chainmen, and the patwari with their 

 servants and bullocks. This is, of course, during the 

 process of estimating the crop. Then if the landlord 

 takes the grain and not a money equivalent, there is 

 the division to be gone through on the threshing- 

 floor. Not infrequently, however, the landlord takes 

 the money value of his share of the grain ; when he 

 does, he prices the grain at 2 seers or less in the 

 rupee higher than the current market rate. Add to 

 this that the estimates made of the crop are in nine 

 cases out often in excess of the actual out-turn, and it 

 will be seen that the Amroha tenant's lot is indeed a 

 very hard one. 



* Money rents are not common ; where current, the 

 procedure is analogous. Working on both fears and 

 hopes, the Syed proprietors — muaftdars [i.e., land- 

 lords exempted from the payment of land revenue) 

 chiefly — force up the rates by a variety of devices. 

 At one time they wheedle the tenants into paying a 

 lump sum on the plough {halsari) ; at another, under 

 pretence of relaxing the plough rate, of which the 

 tenants are weary, they revert to a fixed rate (always 

 enhanced) on the bigha.] Not infrequently, with a 

 degree of cunning which almost does them credit, 



* Complimentary offerings, similar to the ' forced benevolences ' 

 exacted by the Tudor kings. 



•j- Land measure = § acre. 



