S6 



leases, but, as the assessment was high, the leases were taken 

 up by mere speculators, the renters were ruined, the ryots 

 impoverished, and the villages returned to Government. In 

 the Eayadrug taluk alone Sir Thomas Munro states " nearly 

 half the ryots had emigrated, most of the headmen were re- 

 duced to poverty, and many of them had been sent to jail. 

 The substantial ryots, whose stock supported the agricultuj-e 

 of the villages, were gone." The fact was that the old assess- 

 ments, which were continued in their entirety or with only 

 slight reductions in the first years of British administration, 

 were excessive. Under the loose systems of revenue adminis- 

 tration which had prevailed under Native Governments, tilthough 

 the full demand was occasionally realized, the ryot had a 

 great many opportunities of cheating the Government of its 

 dues with the connivance of the revenue agents. Under the 

 more regular system introduced by the Biitish, however, oppor- 

 tunities for evasion and peculation were less frequent. Sir 

 Thomas Munro calculated that out of Rs. 100, the value of the 

 gross produce, the Government assessment was represented by 

 lis. 45-12-0 and the expenses of cultivation by hs. 40, leaving 

 a profit to the ryot of only Es. 14-4-0.^^ The profit was liable 

 to be turned into loss not only in bad seasons, which were by no 

 means infrequent, but also in good seasons when the prices of 

 produce fell. He was of opinion that to encourage cultivation 

 of land and give it saleable value, the Government demand 

 should be limited to one-third of the gross produce, and strongly 

 urged on Government, in 1807, the desirability of reducing the 

 assessment on wet and dry lands by 25 and on garden lands by 

 33^ per cent. The Government, while acquiescing in the justice 

 of the recommendation, was unable to sanction it in consequence 



'3 Mr. (?. E. Uussel, the Collector of Masulipatam, writing in 1819, estiniHtes the average 

 profit of cultivation made by the ryots in the zemindari villages in the Kistna delta at 

 even less. His calculations are as follows for wet lands : — 



Value of gross produce 



Government assessment . . 

 Durbar charges and other taxes. . 



Expenses of cultivation 



A ryot's family, consisting of five persons, will cost for grain alone Es. 33. Mr. Rus 

 adds : "The plough its.lf aff'irds little towards his support, and were it not that it giA 



Ruseel 

 support, ana were it not that it gives 

 him a. valunble right of pasture for his cattle and ground for liis pumpkins, he could not 

 subsist. A single she-bulfalo will yield him Rs. 8 per annum in ghee alone, and the profit 

 he derives from this source added to th< labour of his women enable him to procure 

 the necessaries of life, but even tliese aids will not always affoid him the means of subsis- 

 tence, and for 2 or 3 months in the year tlie fruit from his pumpkin garden, mixed up 

 with his buttermilk or a very sm;ill proportion of meat, is the daily diet of his family " 



Dr. Macleane in hin 3f'i»U"l of Adininistn'fion fitntes of the ryots of Nellorq,; "His- 

 torically it is said that the farmers devoted themselves to cattle breeding in despair of 

 obtaining remunerative priceg from agricnltnre." 



