109 



establishment for the conservancy of, and distribution of 

 water in, irrigation chunnels and may be left out of the 

 calculation. Land cess is levied for the maintenance of 

 roads, bridges, hospitals and other services administered by 

 the Local Fund Boards. The village service cess is utilised 

 for the maintenance of the village establishments and super- 

 sedes in part at least the merahs and grain fees, which, 

 according to the custom of the country, the ryots were 

 bound to pay for the maintenance of village servants. The 

 two cesses on ryotwar lands amount to 52^ lakhs of rupees. 

 The whole amount is not a new charge, as the value of 

 the old merahs customarily paid before the village-cess was 

 introduced and which are now no longer paid must be 

 deducted. The increase of taxation on ryotwar land, taking 

 both land revenue proper and provincial rates together, 

 cannot be more than 10 lakhs of rupees, if even so much. 

 Practically, therefore, the incidence of the land taxes remains 

 the same now as it was in 1850 in nominal money value, 

 while owing to the fall in the purchasing power of money, 

 2-| rupees now being equivalent to 1 rupee before, a ryot has 

 to sell only two-fifths of the crop he would have had to sell 

 formerly to discharge the Government dues. 



47. The considerations referred to above clearly show 

 Pressure of the* land ^^^t the pressurc of the land tax is very 

 tax and selling prices much Icss at prcscut than it was in the 

 °*^^^*^" year 1850, even after making allowance 



for the fact that the area of land actually cultivated was in 

 excess of the recorded area in former years. That the tax is 

 in itself moderate is shown by the high prices obtained for 

 much of the land under cultivation. I have collected and 

 given in the appendix V.-E. (d) such statistics as could be 

 obtained as regards the value of lands in a few districts from 

 the records of the Registration department. In 1830, land 

 had little or no value throughout the greater portion of the 

 Presidency with the exception of the districts of Tanjore, 

 Malabar, South Canara and the river-irrigated portions of 

 Madura and Tinnevelly. In the rich deltas of the Kistna and 

 the Godavari, transfers of land by sale appear to have been 

 almost unknown till about 1850. In 1853 Sir Walter Elliott, 

 the Commissioner of the Northern Circars, reported that in 

 the Kistna district land was generally unsaleable, and that, in 

 the only instances which had come to his notice, the area 

 sold was 15 acres of dry and 56 J acres of wet land, the 

 price obtained being Rs. 203. Again the same oflBcer re- 

 ported in 1854 that the only case of sale of assessed lands 



