Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 2 (2nd edition).pdf/17

 BALASOH.

7

the Census Report of i88i.

Villages with less than 200 inhabitants, from 200 from 500 to 1000, 210; from 1000 to to 500, 1134; 4959} 2000, 26 ; from 2000 to 3000, i ; and i with from 20,000 to 50,000. Agriadlure Rice is the staple crop in Balasor, as throughout the rest of Orissa ; indeed, it may almost be called the only crop of the District, as it has been estimated that but one acre in a thousand of the cultivated area is sown with any other crop. The principal rice crop is.

sown

—

May and June;

in

the reaping seasons vary for different varieties,

the crops sown in high lands being repeated in July, August, and Sep-

tember; those sown on middling lands, in September and October; and the variety {guru) sown in low lands, in

December and January.

The

coarse varieties of the grain are the most easily cultivated, but of late

more extensively grown than formerly. Manure, consisting of cow dung, ashes, tank mud, etc., is used at least once in five years, 10 cwts. being allowed for an acre of rice land. Rents vary according to the situation of the land (and its liability to heavy floods) and to the tenure on which it is held the average rate for pal land, which produces the finer kinds of rice, and also bears a second crop, is 6s. Such land yields from 12 cwts. to 15 cwts. of coarse paddy, or from 7 to 10 cwts. of fine paddy every year, the average value of which may be taken as the out-turn of the second crop may be valued at from 12s. to i6s. an acre. Nearly two-thirds of the District is cultivated, and the remaining portion is almost all incapable of tillage. M'ages, and with them prices, have much increased in Balasor of late years. The wage of a day-labourer, which was in 1850 i^d., and had in i860 risen to 3d., is now 3|d. and a similar rise has taken place in the wages of skilled workmen. The price of common rice in 1850 was is. lo^d. per cwt. in i860 it had risen to 2s. 3d. per cwt., in 1870 to 3s. 2d., and in 1880 to 3s. 6d. Owing to the extraordinary manner in which estates in Balasor are cut up, the condition of years the finer sorts have been









the peasantry

is

A single estate

not very satisfactory.

generally consists

of several villages or patches of land situated in different pargands, quite separate,

and often

at

is,

of course, the result.

landholder cannot supervise the whole of his for

him

vators,

to take

who on

an

Endless

a considerable distance from each other.

confusion regarding boundaries

intelligent interest in

their part

must be

it,

estate,

or to

do

and

it is

Further, a

impossible

justice to the culti-

satisfied with very small holdings,

unless they are willing to hold under several proprietors, or to farm a

number of unknown

there are not in the whole District

holdings of from 20 to 100 acres in

below 10

acres.

Natural Calamities drought.

same landlord. Large farms are more than a hundred extent, and about 60 per cent, are

scattered patches under the

The

.

—The

floods are

District suffers

due

to the

sudden

much from both

flood

and

rising of the rivers in the