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,