60 PROPOSED TENANCY REFORMS 



will suffer by being ejected. In the first place he may 

 lose something through the time necessarily taken up after 

 receiving the notice in searching for another holding. 

 When the time comes for moving he has in many cases to 

 convey his family and personal belongings to another village, 

 also his live stock and agricultural implements, seed, etc. 

 Thirdly, in the first year of the cultivation of a new holding 

 he is necessarily at a disadvantage through not being fully 

 acquainted with the soil, and his cultivation will not be so 

 profitable as if he had remained another year on the old 

 holding. 



When the competition for land becomes severe, it is 

 impossible to maintain the old legal fiction that the tenant 

 and landlord meet on equal terms and enter into a free 

 contract. The tenant undoubtedly needs some protection ; 

 but it seems to me that in the interests of progressive agri- 

 culture this protection should not extend to giving the ten- 

 ant any form of proprietary rights, but should be limited 

 merely to securing to him the full and regular fruits of his 

 labor. Theoretically the position should be that, even if he 

 should suffer a capricious ejectment by his landlord, he 

 would not thereby be put to a monetary loss. 



We are not, however, much nearer to settling the 

 amount of compensation for disturbance ; obviously it ought 

 to be settled separately in every case, and this is the practice 

 under the English Law. In India we have not yet a suffi- 

 cient number of trustworthy men to act as valuers ; and 

 consequently it would be quite impracticable to settle the 

 compensation for disturbance separately in each case. The 

 important thing is to introduce the principle ; and after it 

 has become well-recognized some more refined method of 

 fixing it may be evolved. For the present I can only suggest 

 that the compensation for disturbance be fixed at some pro- 

 portion of the annual rental, possibly, say, 20 per cent at 



