HARVEST AND BAZAAR PRICES 221 



the incontestable evidence of figures, and is no mere 

 conjecture. 



1 Bazaar prices must always have been governed by 

 the ordinary laws of supply and demand, all the com- 

 munity being purchasers, and the supply distributed 

 among many competing sellers. Therefore if the 

 demand increase, and the supply at hand be not in 

 proportion, prices will rise at once. But in the deter- 

 mination of harvest prices, the cultivators and the 

 village grain-dealer, be he zemindar or baniya, are the 

 sole parties concerned, and the harvest rate is literally 

 the bargain which they conclude with each other. But 

 this bargain is not altogether a free one. The tenant 

 is by long-established usage and his own imprudence 

 dependent greatly on the baniya or zemindar, with 

 whom he deals for his seed, rent advances, often for 

 his food and other necessaries of life. The grip of 

 the purchaser on the seller in such a bargain is a very 

 tight one. Hence in fixing the harvest prices the 

 grain-dealer, who is the purchaser, has generally the 

 best of it. Therefore, on a general rise in the market 

 rates, harvest prices, though they will not remain 

 stationary, will not increase in the same proportion. 

 It is not to be wondered at, then, that bazaar prices 

 have diverged from harvest prices in a greater degree 

 since the Mutiny than before it, seeing that all the 

 causes which bring about a rapid rise in market value 

 have been working since then, while custom and 

 necessity have still operated to retard the advance of 

 harvest rates.' 



The prices for the last thirty years are given for the 

 agricultural year, which begins in July and ends in 

 June. The harvest prices of the rain crops (juar and 

 bajra) are the prices obtaining in the autumn of the 

 earlier year, and the prices of the spring crops (wheat 

 and barley) are those obtaining in April and May of 

 the later year. In the price-list of the earlier period 

 it will be noticed that famine prices are quoted one 



