122 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



Commission, pointed out that ' the real planter who grows and manu- 

 factures his own plant is, in fact, injured by the manufacturer who under- 

 sells him, because he gets his plant at a less price than any free system 

 cultivator in his senses would grow it for.' 7 However, both he and the 

 Commission believed that it would be impossible for nij cultivation to 

 replace ryot cultivation, even if the contract system was abolished, 

 inasmuch as the ryots were already in possession of the good lands and 

 planters could not here obtain compact estates. It would be a slow 

 business for the planter to move his servants and ploughs from place to 

 place, whereas the ryot on the spot could turn out with his own plough 

 and sow the moment the weather was favourable. Therefore, after i860, 

 the planters were still dependent on the ryots and now assured themselves 

 of supplies by procuring leases or other forms of control over ryot land. 

 A planter would make loans and receive as compensation a sub-lease of 

 the ryot's holding, thus becoming often a sub-tenant of his own tenant, 

 over whom he already had general zemindar rights. It was only towards 

 the end of the indigo period that the full plantation system was adopted, 

 immigrant hillmen working in the factories and their women and children 

 in the planters' fields. In 1890 about half of the 240,000 acres under 

 indigo in Bihar was thus cultivated. 



Inasmuch as indigo was superseded by synthetic dyes, we must turn 

 to a commodity in new demand on already occupied land, to find out 

 how a prosperous indigo industry might have evolved under twentieth- 

 century conditions. Tobacco furnishes a good example. The British- 

 American Tobacco Company, through its associated companies, is some- 

 thing more than a merchant and manufacturer in India, yet it is not a 

 planter. The centre of its operations is Gunthur in Madras Province. 

 India is, after the United States, the greatest producer of tobacco in the 

 world, and the great majority of it is consumed locally. Of some 900- 

 1,000 million lb. of Indian tobacco, the British-American Tobacco Com- 

 pany handles about 40 million. Its task has been to introduce tobacco 

 of the Virginian type to Indian consumers on the lines of its earlier 

 work in China, and then, under the stimulus of a protective tariff, to 

 manufacture this kind of leaf in India itself. Its problem was to secure 

 adequate supplies of the right type. Therefore, in addition to its factories, 

 it has a Leaf Development Company, which teaches the ryot how to 

 grow improved varieties and supervises the growing. The seed is issued 

 by the company's staff of expert botanists, and the company contracts to 

 purchase crops of selected ryots whose output can be expected in a normal 

 year to reach a certain figure. It thus exerts in a paternal way the influence 

 which Messrs. Chivers, fruit and jam manufacturers at Histon, Cambridge- 

 shire, exert on the surrounding fruit growers. When the indigo planters 

 tried to improve their product by the issue of selected seed, the ryots 

 refused to take it, lest this should count as a money advance of the old 

 type, which would put them in permanent bondage. But the British- 

 American Tobacco Company has no such designs on the peasant and his 

 land. The ryots grow the new varieties eagerly and well ; and I saw the 

 rich green of the highly cultivated tobacco land around Gunthur. 

 7 P.P., 1861, xlv. s. 25, p. 76. 



