74 PROPOSED TENANCY REFORMS 



of the legal restriction on enhancement of rents in Oudh, so 

 that in the course of, say, 20 or 30 years or more the 

 whole of the land would come to be held on yearly tenancies. 

 This could be permitted, however, only in so far as Taluk- 

 dars and zamindars prove themselves to be good landlords 

 and to be conservative in their demands for rent. The 

 protection of the tenant must remain for many years. 



As the abolition of the landlord's right of ejectment is 

 in my opinion highly undesirable, the only alternative is to 

 provide the tenant with compensation when he is ejected 

 for no fault of his own. The Oudh statutory tenant on 

 being ejected at the end of his lease should be entitled not 

 only to compensation for disturbance, but also to a further 

 compensation for loss of prospective profits. The equity of 

 compensation for loss of prospective profits arises from the 

 spirit, if not from the letter, of the Oudh Rent Act, which 

 was certainly designed with the intention of giving the 

 tenant the benefit of the option of continuing on his holding 

 with a new lease for a further period of seven years at an 

 enhancement not exceeding one anna in the rupee. It 

 must have been realised when the Act was passed that this 

 enhancement would be often less than the increase of the 

 full rental value of the land, and it was definitely intended 

 that the sitting tenant should enjoy the benefit of the 

 profits arising from obtaining a renewal of his lease at less 

 than the full competition rent. The compensation for loss 

 of profits ought theoretically to be calculated at the present 

 value of the difference between the full rental value and 

 the maximum legal rnt after enhancement, but this present 

 value should be calculated by discounting at a high rate of 

 interest at least 12 or 15 per cent per annum, the latter 

 being the rate which most co-operative credit societies are 

 charging to cultivators. 



It might be worth while making an experiment in one 



