Miscellaneous. 



334 



[Oct. 160(5. 



of the ordinary forms of account of the country, the zokar bahi, the katz bahi and 

 the zoznamcha. All that is required on the part of the Registration Department is 

 to see that in the accounts kept up in the village, every item of receipt and 

 every item of expenditure shall find a place. The system is not acceptable to 

 the inspecting staff. It is urged that audit is a difficulty, and the simplicity 

 of audit which was a noticeabbe feature of the model accounts prepared 

 by Mr. Dupernex is regretted. The difficulty of audit is one which must 

 be faced, but which must also be overcome. If work is to be continued 

 on existing lines and the movement is to be widespread, and it must be to 

 prove of any practical value, the accounts must be of a nature which the villager 

 can understand. They are kept, not for the auditor, nor for the Collector, nor for 

 the Registrar, but for the people. The society is theirs— they are responsible for its 

 liabilities. It is only just that they should be permitted to keep the accounts in the 

 manner which they prefer, with the one condition that every item of receipt and 

 expenditure shall find a place, and that each man's separate account shall be 

 separately maintained. The remedy for the audit difficulty lies with the auditor. 

 He will have to learn the village system and the vernacular script. Until he has 

 done so he is not fit for his duties. 



For the detailed rules by which the original societies were guided and 

 governed, by-laws have been substituted. In the model by-laws which have been 

 prepared for the guidance of the punchayat, the greatest latitude has intentionally 

 been left to those bodies. The problem to be faced is not one of principle but one 

 of method ; and the method suited to co-operation in the Provinces can only be 

 discovered by experiment. Consequently, every point, which could well be left to 

 the punchayat for determination, has been left to that body. The terms on 

 which a loan is granted, as to interest and repayment, the objects on which such a 

 loan may be expended, the power to grant extensions, whether on payment of 

 interest or not, all these are matters which are left to the judgment of the local 

 committee. 



This at once raises the thorny question of unreproductive expenditure. In 

 considering this question it is necessary to bear in mind that the circumstances of 

 this country are very different from those of the countries where co-operative 

 credit had its birth. The problem is unique. The agriculturists of these Provinces 

 has from time immemorial pursued the same rocky financial path. He takes 

 advances from the village money lender for seed, for cattle, for food between 

 harvests, for the clothing of himself and his family, for the marriage of his 

 son or his daughter, and for the disposal of his dead. His bania or village money 

 lender has as much right in him according to all the cannons of village custom, 

 as he himself has in his occupancy holding. Any departure from this custom of 

 centuries at once creates a suspicion of faithlessness on the part of the borrower, 

 not only in the breast of the money lender whom he deserts, but in the opinion of his 

 co-villagers. Under normal circumstances and in the absence of pressure, it is 

 incredible that one of the clientele of the village money lender will go elsewhere 

 than to that money lender for any of his financial requirements ; and it must be 

 said that as long as he remains faithful to the money lender, the money lender also 

 remains faithful to him. The bania does not refuse accommodation to his hereditary 

 clients, except under stress of the most abnormal circumstances. Though rejoicing 

 in the name of the village Shyloek, the local money lender is in fact indispensable, 

 and on the whole reasonable. The bond which he takes for advances made is more 

 in the nature of an insurance than an instrument to be used to prove a case in 

 Court. It very seldom actually represents the amount of the loan, and as long as the 

 borrower makes no attempt to remove his custom elsewhere, no suit on the basis of 

 the bond need be anticipated. If any of his debtors are, for reasons other than 



