Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/159

SOUTH INDIAN ECONO3HCS 147 Almost immediately I came to Madras I had my first conversation on the subject. I asked a man if he were a land owner. He told me tha?while living in Madras he owned ten acres of wet. land in his native village, that he had let these to his brother-in-law, and that, though an absentee landlord doing nothing to the land and nndertaking no responsibility except that of paying the land tax, he received and retained for himseli six ti?es the amount of the kist. The first village that ! visited showed a similar result. The chief land owner who owned abont 400 acrss, and' let ont about ?00 acres, told me that the a?erage average received recei?'ed was rent kist Rs5 per acre. in e?'ery other place Rs80 per acre and the Similar information was I visited; and I have received by a land- ascertained tha? the average rent lord who has done at his own expense no improvement whatsoever to the land is five times the kist t. hroughout the districts that I include nnder the term 'South India '. Nor have I fonnd any reason to suppose that Settlement Oilleers ignore:l the instructions which are given to them by the Government of exempting improvements made by the patradar from consideration in determining the alnonnt o1? the kist. Tllns for example in one village when I a. sked what the kist was the ?411agers told me it. was Rs-1-8-0 per acre; when I asked what rent the pa?adar received from the sub-tenant they told me Rs 40 per acre. This was dry land improved by sinking of wells. When I passed out o! British India into the State of Travancore and discussed the subjec? of land revenne with students in the Maharaja's College, they told me that the ?rravancore system was identical with the British system, but that the kist was so moderate as not to be oppressive as it was in British India. I then met an official in the Agricnltural Department of the Travancore Government,