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C. W. ODLINGj ESQ., M.INST.C.E., C.S.I._, ON 



excessive, the rigidity with which they are exacted, be the- 

 seasons good or bad, might with advantage be modified. 



Tenants holding directly from the State have an advantage 

 inasmuch as they are required to pay a fixed rent only, 

 without the addition of presents known as salami or aivahs^ 

 Cultivators dealing with a landlord are expected to present 

 gifts, on the occasion of a birth or marriage in the landlord's 

 family, or their own, or whenever a decent pretext can be 

 found for exacting an extra payment. The reasons given for 

 levying these gifts sometimes border on the grotesque. I was- 

 at one time living with a magistrate in charge of a subdivision 

 of a district, who in the course of an inquiry found that illegal 

 cesses, under thirteen different heads, had been imposed on 

 the cultivators. On one occasion the landlord had, long years, 

 previously, entertained a magistrate, and had since levied 

 yearly a tax to compensate him for the expense which he- 

 liad incurred. The poles which supported the telegraph wires- 

 passed through his land, and, under the name of tar kercha, 

 telegraph tax, he imposed a cess of Is. ^d. a pole on those of 

 his tenants who occupied fields in which the telegraph poles- 

 were fixed. He paid nothing himself towards the cost or 

 working of the telegraph line, and, indeed, was entitled to- 

 compensation, if he cared to claim it, for the trifling area of 

 land occupied by the poles. The possibility of levying an 

 extra cess was too good to be lost. A donation to a school 

 was followed by an annual cess about equal in amount to the 

 donation. It is fair to say that these gifts were in some cases, 

 regarded by both parties as the equivalent of an increased rent, 

 which might possibly have been legally demanded, but which 

 would certainly have been resisted and involved both sides- 

 in heavy legal expenses. In moderation the cultivators do- 

 not object to occasional gifts which have become customary. 



As I have said, many, probably most, of the cultivators are 

 protected from eviction so long as they pay their rents, and 

 many even against any arbitrary increase in rent. On the- 

 other hand there are tenants at will, but whatever the tenure, 

 the cultivator owns his own house, and it is with him, and not- 

 the landlord, that the Irrigation Officer deals. The crops difier 

 in different parts of India, but so far as irrigation is concerned 

 the difference, broadly speaking, is between those parts where- 

 the only irrigation that counts is rice, and Upper India wliere 

 the spring crops are equally, if not more important. My own 

 experience has been in those parts of the country where the 

 main irrigation is of rice. Under any circumstances the water- 



