any one of themselves; and if the new road, or tank, or market-place, or whatever it may be, involves, as it generally will, the demolition of a house or two and the appropriation of the site, the owners will resist to the utmost of their power any requisition advanced by their neighbours, but will at once, and in a most liberal spirit, fall in with the wishes of a European officer. It is not that any compulsion is used, for complaint would be immediately entertained in the Civil Court, but they have confidence in their rulers, and believe them to act from more impersonal and disinterested motives than they attribute to their own townsmen.
If used as a supplement and an incentive to private enterprise and benevolence, the surplus funds of the Municipalities and Act XX.[1] towns might be made far more generally beneficial than they ordinarily are. During the last five years the improvements that have been effected in all the principal towns of this district are so enormous, that every visitor enquires with amazement where the money has come from. The mystery is partly explained by the larger income derived from reproductive improvements. Thus for the year ending the 30th September 1878, which was my first year in the district, the 'Miscellaneous' income of all the Act XX. towns amounted only to Rs. 572. It is now Rs. 4,900, i. e. nearly nine times as much. Similarly, in the Khurja Municipality the annual rent of the town lands has risen in the same period from Rs. 1,160 to Rs. 1,850, and in Bulandshahr from Rs. 507 to Rs. 1,550. If the same systematic development were maintained for another decade or two, it would then be possible in many places to abolish both the octroi and the house tax, and still have a sufficient income for local requirements. But, in order to ensure such results local knowledge is indispensable. When a Collector is simply a bird of passage, six months here and six months there, and with no special interests any where, beneficial action on his part is simply impossible, and without his initiation nothing will be done; an Indian district—like the whole of the great Oriental world—is absolutely incapable of making progress by itself. Again, the actual outlay has been much below
- ↑ These are a sort of second-class Municipality, constituted by Act XX of 1856, under the provisions of which a small house-tax is levied to defray the expenses of special watch and ward and of conservancy, any balance over being available for roads and drains and other such works. The income is, or can be, supplemented by market dues, slaughter-house fees, and the sale of the street sweepings for manure.
