HARVEST PRICES 225 



far from having diverged, harvest and bazaar prices in 

 Mainpuri during the last thirty years have been very 

 closely bound together. The characteristic differences 

 between the earlier and later period is that after 

 1873-74 harvest prices never fall away so completely 

 from bazaar prices as they frequently did in the 

 earlier period ; the two prices are not only more 

 steady at a higher level, but are also more closely 

 related one with another. I have collected a number 

 of statements of bazaar and harvest prices for various 

 districts, some of which are printed at the end of this 

 chapter. Their testimony is not absolutely uniform, 

 but the majority of them bear witness that harvest and 

 bazaar prices are nowadays very closely linked to- 

 gether. This becomes very evident when the two 

 sets of prices are dotted down upon a chart, and the 

 contrast between the present and earlier periods is 

 particularly apparent in the case of the coarser grains. 

 I should select the chart for bazaar and harvest prices 

 at Sandila (a little town in the Hardoi district) as 

 being typical of the relation between the two curves 

 in modern times. The line of harvest prices, while 

 generally running on a lower level, occasionally cuts 

 and rises above the line of bazaar prices, and the two 

 curves rise and fall, not only in the same direction, but 

 to the same extent. 



The reason why harvest prices appear upon the 

 chart to follow the course of bazaar prices at a year's 

 interval is because the European system of reckoning 

 the year from January 1 divides the Indian agricul- 

 tural year into two. Thus (vide the Sandila chart) 

 the spring (rabi) crop of 1896 was only moderate, and 

 harvest prices stiffened up to 15 seers to the rupee; 

 but the monsoon rains of 1896 ceased absolutely in 

 September, and bazaar prices rose sharply for the 

 rest of the year from two distinct causes: (1) the 

 failure of the autumn crop, which put all the pressure 

 of supporting the population on the existing stores of 



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