44 THE COMPETITION FOR LAND 



the Final Settlement Report of the Moradabad Dis- 

 trict (1881), has made a most valuable study of the 

 subject : 



1 1 have sometimes come across the idea that one 

 great advantage gained by the tenant under batai was 

 the impossibility, at all events, the great difficulty, of 

 their rent being enhanced, except in so far as was 

 gradually and inappreciably effected by the increasing 

 value of the produce. But as a matter of fact this 

 advantage is purely mythical. Even granting that the 

 zemindar has not the power of directly enhancing the 

 rate, the history of the additional impost called kharch 

 (to say nothing of cesses like dhala and nazar) will 

 serve to show on what an unsound basis the theory 

 rests. The origin of kharch (lit. = expense or charge) 

 was almost beyond doubt the payment made out of 

 the produce before division to the different village ser- 

 vants, such as the blacksmith and the patwari. To 

 this the non-resident landlords soon added a charge 

 to defray the expense of the servants they employed 

 to watch and divide the crops after they were cut. 

 Theoretically these men protected the tenant's share 

 against thieves as well as the zemindar's, and they 

 also saved the tenant from the expense, which the 

 landlord argued he ought to bear, of carrying the 

 latter's share to his store-house for him. Rightly or 

 wrongly the burthen was soon too tightly fixed to be 

 shaken off, and in most villages it has been steadily 

 added to on one pretext or another. The landlord 

 soon found that it was an excellent contrivance for 

 bringing up the rents of the men paying light rates to 

 something near the same standard as those of the 

 other tenants, and accordingly we now find that, except 

 in a few exceptional cases where the tenant is pur- 

 posely privileged by the landlord's own free will, most 

 of the light batai rates are burdened with a heavy 

 kharch. In most of the pargannahs the kharch has, 

 under the Board's rule, been amalgamated with the 



