Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/186

178 KHE floods, and the necessity for leaving lands fallow to recover their strength, is at once apparent. It is extremely favourable to the tenant. He leaves a field fallow for a year or two, paying no rept, and when in the first year in which it is again cultivated he gets a magnificent crop, he pays no more than for a poor one. "Want of elasticity in the custom.--But there is some want of elasticity in the custom : the total destruction of the crop always everywhere exempts the tenants from liahility for rents, but a difficulty often arises about the proportional deduction to be allowed for partial damage; when the tenant claims a proportional deduction he must have the lands, the crops of which have been injured, measured by the taluqdar's agent on the spot, and this the agent frequently refuses to do, alleging that the crops are really not damaged. I found several villages in which proportional de ductions from rents for partial damage to the kharif crops of last year had been allowed, and several others in which tenants complained of the hard- ship of deductions not being allowed, the thekadar having refused to measure the extent of the land for which deduction from rent was claimed. The patwáris call land of which rent is thus remitted bila lagáņi or nábác. "Omission of entry of the second crop:—Where the nakshi tenure pre- vails the landlord gets exactly double the rent from dofasli that he does from other lands. This shows the extreme necessity and importance of the correct ascertainment of the dofasli area. The most easy and obvious fraud found in a rent-roll is the mere omission from it of the entries for the second crop for a large portion of the dofasli area ; and this fraud is very difficult of detection, because the forma of jamábandi in ordinary lise is not adapted for those villages in which this peculiar tenure prevails. * "Great difficulty in assessment.--Under the head of village ex- penses a number of petty and vexatious demands are made upon the cultivators. The total amount of these demands is frequently so great as to amount to more than the difference between one-fourth and one-third, or between one-third and one-half of the whole crop. Variety of customs as to village expenses.-A tenant will frequently consent to pay half instead of one-third or one-fourth, on condition of pay- ing no expenses; and the compromise thus effected is generally in favour of the tenant at first, but eventually disadvantageous to him, as in process of time the reason why he is not paying his share of village expenses comes to be forgotten, and they are again demanded from him. “Mazdúri.--Of these items I will mention the principal. It is perhaps hardly fair to enumerate the item called mazdúri, as the landlord gives an equivalent for it. It is the landlord's charge for the wages of plough- men and labourers whose services he lends to the cultivator to enable him to cut his crop and get it to the khaliyán. It varies according to the taluqa, and is demanded in one of the four following ways—(1) 30 sers 44 In most parts of the country the spring or rabi crop pays lower rates than the rain or summer crop.