LAND A8 AN INVESTMENT 29 



his function and faithfully strives to fulfil his duties ; and 

 men will despise the landlord whose sole interest is his 

 swelling rent roll careless of the struggles of those who 

 pay, himself contributing nothing and living in luxury. 

 He is rightly despised. 



This leads me to notice a by no means pleasing feature of 

 the changing economy of these Provinces. I refer to the 

 growing habit of purchasing land as a mere investment of 

 capital. Lawyers and wealthy merchants who have money 

 to invest are keen on buying zemindari estates. The 

 purchaser continues his occupation in the city and puts 

 an agent in charge or sometimes continues the former agent. 

 Land is bought and sold merely on the estimate of its earn- 

 ings to the owner. The total annual collections are ascer- 

 tained and from this is subtracted the revenue payable to 

 Government, and the balance is called the profits. The 

 price paid by the investor varies from 25 to 30 years' 

 purchase of the profit, representing a yield of 4 per cent 

 or less upon his money. This seems peculiar in view of 

 the fact that the yield on the most convenient security 

 in India, namely. Government loans is 6 per cent per 

 annum. The investor in land is probably influenced partly 

 by an anticipation of an increased profit and partly by 

 his desire for the social status conferred by being a zemindar 

 or rais. It cannot be that the majority of such purchasers 

 of land are good landlords. Indeed many of the troubles 

 between landlords and tenants, for which the remedy must 

 be provided are due to the new owner taking a purely com- 

 mercial view of his property and trying to exact that 

 increase which he has anticipated, and also to his lax control 

 as an absentee landlord, over his agent and his subordinates. 

 I shall have to refer again to this difficult problem in a 

 later lecture. 



The principles which should govern the relation of the 



