Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/70

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INTRODUCTION.

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The total cost of administration amounts to private enterprise. J565,000, leaving a surplus to be credited to the empire of £1,300,000 from the actual taxation, or more than two-thirds of the whole sum realized, while the total imperial income, including the profits of the great monopolies and after satisfying all local charges, amounts to £1,900,000, or over 75 per cent, of the gross receipts.

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branches of the local administration ^the jails, the police, the educational and medical establishments, registration, and municipal charges are shown in a separate account, and the imperial subvention of £220,000, already included in the preceding paragraph as part of the ordinary expenses of administration, has to be reinforced by further local taxation in rates, cesses, octroi and ferry dues, and other miscellaneous impositions, yielding an annual revenue of about £375,000. The administration is of the ordinary non-regulation type, the province being divided into twelve districts, each under a deputy commissioner, with four commissioners and a Chief ComThe j udicial work is transacmissioner to supervise the whole. ted entirely by the administrative ofiicers, with a separate high court in the judicial commissioner as an ultimate resort of appeal. Each deputy commissioner has at his disposal a small staff of European and native assistant and extra assistant com-

missioners and tahsildars. When this arrangement was made the population was estimated at six millions, or only half its real amount, while the land revenue was only two-thirds of what it stands at present. The consequence is that the charges are very heavy, much more heavy indeed than in any other part of India. The average population under the control of a single officer is little short of a million, or rather less than twice as much as in the Punjab, more than twice as much as in the Central Provinces, and exceeding British Burmah and Berar in a very much higher population. The amount of the work to be done is determined mainly by the number of the people, and in an Oudh district is not only heavier beyond aU comparison than that in the districts of any other non-regulation province, but equals in the revenue department, while it exceeds in every other, the work for which a collector in the North- West, with his vastly more elaborate and more expensive establishments and the experience of nearly a century of English rule, is responsible. The main innovations on the rule of our predecessors, for which the province is indebted to us, are as follows The necessary force which is at the root of all order has been completely