CHAPTER ViI. 
Lac Rents and Leases. 
By far the greater part of the lac-producing area of India is in 
the hands of the Feudatory Chiefs and large land-owners. It was 
not so long ago, however, that the landed proprietor began to 
realize that an appreciable income could be recovered from his 
tenants on account of lac cultivation. Since then the importance of 
the industry has increased and in some parts his income from lac is 
very much greater than that from land rents. In these circumstances, 
one would expect that all proprietors would take steps to foster and 
increase the cultivation of lac in their estates ; unfortunately there 
is only too large a proportion of the less enlightened who are 
only interested in obtaining a maximum of rent from lac cultivators 
from year to year with little or no provision for extensions. 
The systems adopted in leasing the right to cultivate lac natur¬ 
ally vary considerably in different areas. The agreements are either 
verbal, or consist of a few written terms now more or ‘less stereo¬ 
typed by custom. Only in Government Forests and in adjoining 
zamindaris is any complicated form of lease employed. The period 
of the ordinary agreement between a proprietor and his lac tenant 
may be one year only, or may extend in Chota Nagpur to three or 
five years and in the Central Provinces to six or ten years or even 
longer. 
In Hazaribagh and Gaya districts there are two systems, one of 
cash rents for the right to cultivate, by which the lac becomes the 
property of the lessee; the other of produce rents, by which the 
landlord provides the brood and takes seven-eighths of the crop. 
Independent cultivators will not accept this form of lease, and the 
commonest practice is for the landlord to take three-fourths of the 
crop ; the brood being supplied by the landlord or lessee according 
to their relative business acumen. As the cultivator is frequently 
an aboriginal, and considerably inferior in intelligence to the land¬ 
lord and his agents, he generally gets the worst of the bargain in one 
way or another. In many cases, however, tenants have succeeded 
in establishing a customary right to cultivate lac for which they pay 
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