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and a permanent settlement, while debarring Government 

 from increasing the assessments if there should be a further 

 great fall in the value of silver leading to a corresponding 

 rise in the silver value of produce in this country, would in no 

 way obviate the necessity for granting remissions of revenue 

 if the price of silver should rise to its old level of 2.^. per 

 rupee ; for, land assessments even though permanently fixed 

 would then have become very heavy in their incidence and 

 unrealizable except at the cost of a permanent deterioration 

 in the condition of the agricultural classes. Another objec- 

 tion is that there is diflBculty in fixing permanently the 

 assessment of lands irrigated by works constructed by 

 Government from borrowed capital. The outlay on these 

 works is regulated by commercial principles and it would be 

 an injustice to the general tax-payer, if the money assess- 

 ment leviable on the lands irrigated be permanently fixed 

 and made independent of the changes in the value of money 

 instead of the payments made by the land -holders specially 

 benefited by the works being adjusted from time to time 

 according to circumstances with reference to the value of the 

 benefits received. It is possible to separate the charge ^^ for 

 water from land assessment proper, and to fix the latter 

 permanently while the former may continue liable to altera- 

 tion. As, however, the charge for water forms in the case 

 of irrigated land the larger portion of the payment made 

 to Government, the land-holder gains little or nothing by 

 a permanent settlement of this kind. A third objection 

 is that to tracts which are liable to frequent droughts a 

 permanent settlement is unsuited. In these tracts it is not 

 the amount of assessment that presses, but the collection of 

 any assessment in adverse seasons when the ryot has reaped 

 either no produce or only such short produce as hardly 

 suffices for his subsistence. In tracts of this kind subject 

 to extreme vicissitudes of season, the introduction of the old 

 native system of sharing the crop, which is really an annual 

 settlement, has been frequently advocated. Even in the case 

 of irrigated lands, the duty of maintaining irrigation works 



*' This is the plan adopted in the case of lands irrigated by the Godavari and Kistna 

 anicut works. The plan has been found to work badly and has not been adopted in the 

 case of other irrigation works recently constructed. The separation of land assessment 

 from charge for water is entirely artificial. Lands unfit for unirrigated cultivation 

 may be eminently fitted for irrigated cultivation. The levy of a charge for water at a 

 uniform rate unduly lowers the land revenue imposable on some soils and enhances that 

 of others and causes great inequalities in the assessments. The system of levying a 

 water-rate on lands permanently irrigated fi-om productive irrigation works has there- 

 fore been abanfloned and the profit from the works is now roughly arrivod at by taking 

 the difference between the entire assessment of the lands ii-rigated and the highest dry 

 rate which would h*ve been imposed had the lands remained unirrigated, as the chargg 

 for water. 



