( 63A ) 



to Ee. 1 or Be. 1-8-0. This procedure would be somewhat similar to 

 the system under which inundation bandhs are made in Bundel- 

 khand by the Irrigation department and an annual rate charged per 

 acre of land affected. While Mr. Courthope is ready to admit that 

 such a scheme 'has decided advantages, such as that Government 

 incurs no risk of a financial failure and receives from the start a fair 

 return on its money, he is of the opinion that few landholders 

 would be likely to pay an annual rent or tax on their own land for 

 the sake of protecting their cultivation on behalf, mainly, of their 

 heirs. On the other hand, Mr. Fremantle thinks that some of 

 those landholders who have expressed their readiness to take 

 taqavi, on which they will have to pay 6 per cent interest, and 

 which they would ultimately have to repay, and carry out the work 

 of reclamation themselves would certainly be willing to let a 

 department do the work without in any way assuming control of 

 the land when the work has been done, if they only have to pay 

 what corresponds to interest on the loan and were not compelled 

 to repay the capital except at their own desire. Mr. Courthope 

 thinks that, even if landholders were found, reclamation work done 

 in this way would prove a failure because landholders would not 

 take the trouble to maintain the bandhs, and that they would allow 

 their tenants to ruin the plantations, as soon as they were estab- 

 lished, by ruthless lopping and unrestricted grazing, and that even 

 if the landholders were bound down to certain lines of management 

 a procedure of which Mr. Fremantle disapproves on the grounds 

 that if the landholder is paying an annual rental for the reclama- 

 tion he is entitled to treat his land as he pleases it would require 

 too large a staff to ensure the terms of the agreement being 

 carried out. 



Here, again, Mr. Freinantle does not agree, as he claims that a 

 zamindar, who is paying for the successful reclamation of his land, 

 is sufficiently alive to his own interests to maintain the improve- 

 ment effected. 



24. Mr. Fremantle considers this scheme applicable mainly to 

 narrow strips of ravines running up from the main blocks of 

 ravines into stretches of cultivation which perhaps it might not be 

 possible to include in larger schemes, and also for the purpose of 

 forming a narrow belt of afforested land across the heads of the 

 ravines to protect the uplands from further erosion. Mr. Court- 

 hope admits Mr. Fremantle's contention that, if successful, this 

 scheme would result in a larger area of cultivated land being pro- 

 tected at a smaller cost and more quickly than by reclaiming and 

 afforesting compact blocks of ravines, but thinks that a special 

 officer with a separate staff would have to be employed to supervise 



