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BAH

145

feet, and consequently the condition of the people has altered since the settlement report was written.

Wages

in Bahraich seem, when paid in money or grain by the day or month, to be about the same as in other places. common rate is one anna, and a kachcha seroichabena or parched grain, generally maize, per day ; this is worth about eight annas in the month and we have again the rate of Rs. 2-4 per month of twenty-eight days, which is usual in Sitapur, at least in the thinly-peopled parts of that district

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One anna alone without the grain allowance is paid to well-grown youths. There is less irrigation in Bahraich, and consequently less demand for labour at the wells and tanks. The people state that the ordinary rate of wage is five pice if the labourer offers his services, but one anna and parched grain considered equal to half an anna if the employer makes the first advances. The sdwak system, here pronounced saunJc, is in full force, as indeed everywhere east of the Gogra. Under it a man of any of the e sawa sys em. £^^^ castes Lodk, Chamdr, Kori, Kurmi ^receives an advance from a farmer and becomes his bond serf for life, or till he pays off the advance, which, it must be noted, does not bear interest. The ordinary sum so given varies from Rs. 30 to Rs. 100, and for this a man binds himself and his children down till the remotest generation. It is quite common to meet men whose fathers entered into these obligations, and who

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labour in their discharge, although well aware that they can discard free to sell their labour in the open market whenever they choose. I have also met instances of swank in which men had been turned adrift by their masters who, owing to the drought, had either no employment or no food for them they professed at any rate their willingness to return whenever their masters' circumstances allowed it, and admitted their right to recall them.

still

them and be



Such men receive nominally one-sixth of the crop, whatever it be, on which they have laboured as ploughmen and reapers. The general division, though, is slightly different. The unit of measurement and sub-division is from this

taken IJ panseris or l| sers fanseri for the ploughman's is conditional upon her performing the two wife duties of grinding grain for the master's family and of making the cowdung cakes which are used as fueL The farmer is not bound to concede these The privileges and their payment, nor the labourer to undertake them. former thereby retains some check upon the females of his hinds, whose tongues he dreads with terror which Englishmen can hardly conceive. When the crop is a bad one, of course the saunkia suffers with the rest, more so, in fact, because it is almost impossible that he can have any fund of savings to fall back upon. ten.

fcmseris, or

fifty local sers,

ploughman, and 2^ but this last payment

for the

is

sers or half a

that this ancient form of servitude is now broken and that they have to humour their labourers into a continuance Otherwise they simply defy their masters to put of voluntary dependence. them into the civil jail, in which they cannot be kept more than six months, at a time, and are maintained by their masters.

The farmers complain

at pleasure,

K