122 THE KHAM TAHSIL SYSTEM. 



mode in which the revenue is collected, is that it provides no 

 check on wasteful or fraudulent cutting. Any one may fell 

 more than he can or intends to take out, and dishonest people may 

 cut without fear, in the hope of being able to smuggle out some 

 part of the produce, The case is worst of all when the protective 

 and revenue-collecting establishments conspire together with the 

 smugglers. To minimise the chances of such collusion, the follow- 

 ing precautions have to be taken : — (1). To establish two parallel 

 lines of stations as far apart from one another as possible, the 

 stations of the first line being on the edge of the forest. (2). On 

 any consignment of produce reaching the first line, it should be 

 counted or measured up and a pass issued thereon. (3). At the 

 second line of stations, this pass and the produce should be checked 

 together, and if no discrepancy be foundj the pass should be taken 

 away, the price of the produce collected, and a fresh pass issued. 

 (4). Counterfoils, or in their stead a statement detailing their 

 contents, should be despatched to the control office on the very 

 day of issue. (5). Separate, responsible, well-paid inspecting 

 officers should constantly patrol both lines of stations. If found 

 more practical, the respective functions of the two parallel lines 

 of stations can of course be reversed, the money being levied on 

 the first line, and only a fresh pass issued at the second in lieu of 

 the original pass issued on receipt of the royalty. 



A very primitive form of the kham tahsil system is that in 

 which the people who cut and bring the produce to the revenue 

 stations are not purchasers at all, but act merely as wood-cutters 

 and carriers. The purchasers themselves need not go nearer the 

 forests than those stations. When the produce reaches such a sta- 

 tion, the men who have brought it are paid for cutting, conversion, 

 and carriage, and the purchaser, after paying royalty to the offi- 

 cial in charge of the station, obtains a pass and takes away the pro- 

 duce under cover of it. This system has been adopted, as a matter 

 of policy, in forests inhabited by poor aboriginal tribes, whose nearly 

 sole means of subsistence is wood-cutting. It is also in force in 

 some places for the working of bamboo forest. 



Under the most favourable circumstances the kham tahsil sys- 

 tem is a very clumsy one, and can have only a very limited ap- 

 plication. Besides labouring under the essential drawback of re- 

 quiring certain exceptional topographical features, it can, like the 

 license system, be adopted for only the inferior classes of produce, 

 and it is far more open to fraud than any other system. When tho 

 configuration of the country permits of its adoption, it may be 

 resorted to temporarily, to encourage an incipient or languishing 



