Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/189

 KHE 181 " Cash rents in nakshi villages.As has already been mentioned in the other 41 villages of Bhur proper where the nakshi tenure prevails, grain rents are at present entirely unknown. It is here that the greatest spread of cultivation has taken place. The cultivators havc hardly yet been able to find out much about the soil, and the consequence is that wo find that differences of soil have hardly begun yet to be recognized by them as circumstances affecting the rent they are to pay. Throughout these villages it is not the quality of the soil that determined the rent of the field, but the time that has elapsed since the land was broken up, In the first year land is called banjar, in the second chanchar, in the third polich; and there are different rates for banjar, chanchar, and polich ; these variations are wellknown to the cultivators and universally recognized, aud no other standard of rent is now known or remembered. Even facilities of irrigation are not recognizedat present asjustifying a higher rent in those villages; out of these 41 where irr tion is practised, viz., the 15 villages of the Kundwa Paraunch chak, no cultivatoris allowed to have allhis fieldsin one hár. Every one, high caste or low, takes a share both of the good and the bad land and pays the same rent, whether the land is irrigated or not. Mr. Bradley of Aliganj told me he could not get his asámis to consent to pay rent at different rates proportioned to quality of soil. They conscnted rather to pay a somewhat high rent, provided it was equally applied to all fields. The cultivator's idea is that a uniform rate makes future enhancement more difficult to the landlord, “What these rent-rates are. The rate on banjar is usually two annas per kachcha bígha, chanchar three annas, polich four annas, rapidly rising everywhere to five annas; expenses are two annas and two and a half annas per rupee. In some of the grants tenants have even been allowed to hold rent-free for the first year; and in villages near these grants onc and a half anna per kachcha bígha is the rent paid for banjar. “ Liberal offers necessary to tempt settlers.–Of course these are very favourable terms, and the consequence has been a large immigration into these parts of Bhúr, specially into those 15 villages (out of the 41 nakshi villages) which lie, not in the ganjar, but in the Kundwa Barauncha chak. It is here that cultivation has increased 300 per cent. The aversion of tenants from the upper country to settle in the gánjar is, however, over- come by the offer of land on these liberal terms. Thus I have found in- stances of khudkásht ryots cultivating at much lower rates than pahi- kásht, the landlord having induced them to settle in an unhealthy spot by allowing them to hold at two-thirds of the rept paid by ryots who culti- vated the same land, but lived in the next village. "But no expenditure necessary on landlord's part.--It need hardly be remarked that this immense spread of cultivation has been effected with- out the expenditure of a pice on the part of the zamindars who own the land. Year after year their profits incrcase without the slightest labour or expenditure on their part. No advance is necessary even for building a house, for houses are built in these parts of thatch grass, which the cultivator can cut in the waste lands himself, 24