Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/129

AGRICULTURE AND IRRIGATION estates, suits under the tenancy law are almost unknown, and if only ryotwari tenure could replace the mustájari (renting) system the people would have little to complain of. In the smaller estates things are sometimes managed differently. Tho pattas in Mádgole formally stipulate that the ryot shall send the zamindar the haunch of every deer shot and provide for miscellaneous payments of all kinds, and many of the cultivators of Páchipenta were recently driven to emigrate to Jeypore land because their plough and hoe taxes had been more than doubled arbitrarily. But on the whole the hill ryot is a cheery and well-nourished individual who can afford to dress his womenkind in bright cloths and load them with brass ornaments, keeps up to the local standard of comfort without undue effort, and every spring takes a clear month's holiday enlivened by songs, dances, beats for game, unlimited strong drink, and deep draughts of other pleasures of the flesh.

Two flies in this amber are the Vetti, or compulsory service,and the Sondi, the liquor-seller and money-lender. Vetti service is now becoming less universal, but while the Jeypore estate was under management Mr. H. D. Taylor reported that though this unpaid labour was really only demandable by custom by the Mahárája himself (and that too on payment of daily batta) yet he ámíns and lower revenue officials and the mustájars and others had come to exact it for the cultivation of their private land and did not even pay the labourer his batta.

The Sondis are a more serious evil. They are gradually getting much of the best land into their hands and many of the guileless hill ryots into their power. Mr. Taylor stated in 1892 that —

'The rate of interest on loans extorted by these Sondis is 100 per cent., and if this is not cleared off in the first year, compound interest at 100 per cent, is charged on the balance. The result is that in many instances the cultivators are unable to pay in cash or kind and become the gótis or serfs of the sowcare, for whom they have to work in return for mere batta, whilst the latter take care to manipulate their accounts in such a manner that the debt is never paid off. A remarkable instance of this tyranny was brought to my notice a few days since: a ryot some fifty years back borrowed Rs. 20: he paid back Ks. 50 at intervals and worked for the whole of his life and died in harness: for the same debt the sowcar claimed the services of his son, and he too died in boadage leaving two small sons aged 13 and 9, whose services were also claimed for an alleged arrear of Rs. 30 on a debt of Rs.20, borrowed 50 years back, for which Rs. 50 in cash had been repaid in addition to the perpetual labour of a man for a similar period.' 109