58 THE COMPETITION FOR LAND 



they affect to take the villagers into their confidence ; 

 they make over the whole of their lands to the culti- 

 vating community, represented by three or four head- 

 men, at a lump sum in excess of any previous rental. 

 This artifice I found to be not at all an uncommon 

 one. The tenantry are informed that their landlord 

 has been graciously pleased to elevate them to the 

 dignity of independent lessees at a certain rental. The 

 people, deeming their freedom from perpetual inter- 

 ference cheaply bought by the enhancement of their 

 rental, and elated by the concession of a quasi-inde- 

 pendence, gladly accede, leaving the distribution of 

 the big rent for amicable adjustment over their hiikas 

 (pipes) in the chupal. The lease agreement is gener- 

 ally a stamped document, sometimes for a fixed period, 

 sometimes W\\.h no period specified. As long as the 

 tenants hold on and pay without breaking down and 

 taking to their heels the watchful landlord keeps them 

 to their agreement. When at last the burden be- 

 comes intolerable and the crash comes, and the 

 villagers pray to get back their old holdings with their 

 separate quotas of rent, they find their landlord has 

 been too much for them. Restore them to their hold- 

 ings he will, but on very different conditions to those 

 under which they held before the fatal lease. The 

 lease, their landlord rules, — and his ruling with its 

 semblance of legality is law to them — has cancelled all 

 old occupancy rights, and the cultivators are at his 

 mercy. A redistribution of lands is made — another 

 agreement patched up — the needful enhancement 

 never being lost sight of, and things go on again for 

 a while. 



' Even rack-renting, if conducted in a regular and 

 understood system, may be borne after a fashion. 

 When to it is added a state of perpetual change, and 

 when tenants are never certain what their landlord's 

 next whim may be, the evil is aggravated. In whole 

 tracts there really has never been any sort of fixity in 



