ool 



bullocks, &c., and having spent the money received from these, he is 

 without any resources. He is unable to raise money on his fields from 

 the sowcar, as he has no rights of occupancy ; therefore his last hope 

 is to get an advance from the Zemindar ; failing this, he leaves his 

 village and seeks work as a cooly elsewhere. This is what happened 

 last year. In November we had excellent rain^, but owing to the 

 exhaustion of the cultivators, the fields remained uuploughed- The 

 Zemindar gave no advances, or to such a small extent that they were 

 useless. Many ryots had already left their villages, and others were 

 preparing to do so ; roofless houses were seen in all directions and 

 some small villages were entirely deserted." 



(5) JBxtraci from the Administration Beport of the Puduhota State j or 

 188L-82 hy the Dewan-Regent Mr. A, Sashiah Shastriar, G.8.I., 

 describing the evils of the system of collecting the Government 

 assessment on land in hind hy a division of the crops raided. 



*' I have already remarked that the prevailing revenue system 

 was the ' amani/ A very large portion of the lands under cultivation 

 and believed to be of the best kind were held under this system. The 

 property in these lands icas vested in the sirkar. The ryots were in 

 most cases tenants-at-will and theoretically could be turned out with- 

 out their consent. The transfer or sale of such lands was void at law. 

 The crop raised by the ryot (at his own expense generally, and at 

 times assisted with seed-grain from sirkar) was shai'ed half and half * 

 between him and the sirkar. He moved his share to his own house 

 and carried the sirkar share to the granaries provided for the purpose, 

 and if there were none, kept it in his own house either in trust, or 

 under the lock and key of the responsible sirkar village officers. 

 These were the main features of the system, and to one who knows 

 no more, they must appear on their face to be very just indeed. 

 What could be moi'e fair ? The ryot and the sirkar, by sharing* the 

 crop equally, share equally the vicissitudes of season and market. 



2. " During a life-long career of service, I have had opportunities 

 of watching closely the evils of the sharing system in all its varied 

 forms in many districts of the Madras Presidency, as well as in 

 Travancore, and my experiences have been of an interestingly sad 

 kind. To tell the whole tale would occupy more space than would 

 be justifiable in this place. I shall, therefore, content myself with 

 stating briefly what is the case in this State. 



3. '^The system is saturated with evils and frauds of a grave 

 nature. 



(a) "■ The ryots having no heritable or transferable property never 

 cared to cultivate the amani lands in due season. If you saw a bit of 

 cultivation at the tail-end of the season, the chances are it is ' amani.' 

 Ryots prefer infinitely to cultivate other lands held on different 

 tenures, such as inam, jeevithem and mouey assessed lands. To 

 prevent this, a penal agreement is forced from them to the efl^ect that 

 they would not faif to cultivate the 'amani' lands first. 



* This is the prevailing proportion, but it varied in special cases, sometimes two- 

 fifth and sometimes half and so on, 



