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 U

 
 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF 
 A BENGAL DISTRICT
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK 
 TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THli UNIVERSITV
 
 THE 
 ECONOMIC LIFE 
 
 OF A 
 
 BENGAL DISTRICT 
 
 ^ STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 J. C. JACK 
 
 OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICK 
 AND TEMPORARILY OF THE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERV 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1916
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 I FEEL that some apology is necessary for the 
 production of a book of economic statistics at such 
 a time as this. The origin of the work is to be found 
 in an opportunity which offered itself many years ago. 
 The statistics were collected between the years 1906 
 and 1 9 10, but took much time and labour to tabulate. 
 The author was then full of zeal and enthusiasm ; but 
 when the tabulation had been finished his energy had 
 slackened and he was no longer in close touch with 
 the locality to which the statistics refer. For these 
 reasons the statistics remained buried treasure waiting 
 to be revealed. The war has brought matters to a crisis. 
 The author is about to go to the front ; as there is 
 neither collaborator nor substitute in official life in 
 India, no other can undertake the revelation. Hence 
 it has become necessary to crowd into a leave of 
 five short days the introduction of these statistics to 
 the world, or to risk their entire loss. I could not 
 hope in so short a time to do justice to the figures, 
 still less to make their dry bones live, but I was 
 loath to let them perish utterly. They were collected 
 with very great labour by many hands with much 
 devotion ; it is but fair that such labour should not 
 be altogether fruitless. Further, I believe them to be 
 unique, as no similar enquiries have ever been made in 
 India or elsewhere over so large a tract of country and
 
 6 FOREWORD 
 
 so large a population, or by an agency so well adapted 
 to the work. Lastly, I venture to hope that they are 
 a contribution of some little value to aid judgement of 
 British rule in India. That rule has been much attacked 
 of late on the economic side. Its most powerful defence 
 must lie in statistics such as these, which reveal in 
 detail and yet comprehensively the resources of the 
 people and the burden which taxation lays upon them. 
 The work of the British in India has only one counter- 
 part in recorded history, the Roman Empire, upon 
 which historians have agreed to lay the blame that it 
 sucked the orange of its provinces dry and left only 
 the rind to its subjects. This book will not be 
 written in vain if it proves that, in one corner of India 
 at least, no such charge can be laid against the British 
 Empire. 
 
 A few words ought to be said about the origin of 
 the investigations with which these pages deal. The 
 Government of India undertook more than twenty 
 years ago to prepare for the great Indian province 
 of Bengal, which then contained eighty million inhabi- 
 tants, of whom sixty millions tilled the soil, a record of 
 rights, so that each cultivator might learn accurately 
 and authoritatively the size of his holding, the 
 amount of his rent and the conditions of his tenure. 
 This great document has been prepared gradually for 
 each district, or county as we say in England, in turn. 
 It is a gigantic labour preceded by an accurate and 
 detailed survey of every acre in the county and of the 
 boundaries of every field and carried out by investiga- 
 tions in three successive years, in which each landlord
 
 FOREWORD 7 
 
 and each peasant are separately consulted and cross- 
 examined. 
 
 When the work of investigation is complete, a map 
 is printed of every village and a copy given to each 
 peasant and each landlord, while a paper is prepared, 
 printed and similarly distributed, in which are described 
 the fields in the holding of each peasant and the condi- 
 tions under which he holds them. This record of rights 
 was prepared in the district of Faridpur between the 
 years of 1906 and 19 10, although it was finally com- 
 pleted and published only in the present year. Faridpur 
 contains over two million inhabitants and an area 
 larger than Devonshire ; and the record-of-rights when 
 completed was contained in 4,000 volumes with a total 
 of nearly two million pages. These figures are men- 
 tioned merely to show the monumental nature of the 
 work which the Government of India had undertaken. 
 
 It was no part of the intention of that Government 
 to convert the preparation of this record-of-rights into 
 a means of obtaininof information concerningr the 
 income and resources of the people ; but the staff by 
 which the record-of-rights was prepared in the district 
 of Faridpur, consisting almost entirely of young and 
 eager graduates of the universities, was well fitted to 
 supplement its task by such economic investigations. 
 Each of these young graduates spent several months 
 at one spot in the course of duties which engaged him 
 in enquiries into the holdings of all the cultivators, 
 into the capability of the soil and into the relations of 
 tenants, both legal and customary, with their landlords. 
 He obtained a vast amount of information concerning
 
 8 FOREWORD 
 
 all the families of the village and frequently saw all 
 the villagers and made many visits to their home- 
 steads ; he could collect the villagers together and 
 without offending them discuss with each the amount 
 of his income and the way in which he spent it. It 
 was decided, therefore, to add an enquiry into income 
 to the work already done by this staff and to tabulate 
 the result in the form of a series of figures showing 
 the amount earned by every family in every variety of 
 occupation. The basis of the investigation was the 
 family, because the unit of economic life in India is 
 the family and not the individual. Each of these 
 graduates also collected information of the expendi- 
 ture of typical families and drew up normal budgets 
 for families in varying circumstances. For easy com- 
 prehension of the mass of figures four classes were 
 adopted, representing varying material conditions 
 between comfort and actual want, to one of which 
 every family was allocated. The classification was 
 not made upon figures of income or expenditure, but 
 always upon an inspection of the family and the 
 family circumstances in its own homestead. Only 
 such families as were well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed 
 according to the evidence of the eye were permitted 
 to be classified as living in comfort. By such a safe- 
 guard it was intended that the method of enquiry 
 should be thoroughly practical, avoiding anything 
 academic or mechanical, but ensuring accuracy by 
 concomitant statistical investigation. 
 
 After the investigation was completed and the 
 statistics were ready, there remained the question of
 
 FOREWORD 9 
 
 the form in which they should be presented to the 
 pubhc. The statistics in themselves, however detailed 
 or however condensed, if published without commen- 
 tary or explanation, would be unintelligible to any 
 reader except one closely connected with the district 
 of Faridpur, and not easily intelligible even to him. 
 On the other hand, if an explanation or commentary 
 were to be supplied, it was necessary to decide whether 
 it should be such as would serve to give the statistics 
 a meaning to those who had never been in India, or 
 as would satisfy those who already had some know- 
 ledge of the Indian world. It is only too clear to the 
 author that his public will be very small, if indeed it 
 prove to exist at all ; yet the home of serious economic 
 enquiry is in Europe, and he has therefore decided to 
 attempt to explain the statistics in such a manner as 
 to enable any one, whether acquainted with India or 
 ignorant of it, to understand them. This decision 
 involved the writing of a much longer book than 
 would have otherwise been necessary ; but the addi- 
 tional labour will not perhaps have been spent in vain 
 if this book comes into the hands of a single serious 
 enquirer outside of India. 
 
 I have already said that the information upon 
 which this study is based has been collected by many 
 helpers, who have obtained no other reward for their 
 labours than the thanks of the author. His thanks 
 are given to them from a full heart, for he knows too 
 well what unending toil and irritation they underwent 
 in the collection of the information. It is not right 
 that their names should be unrecorded ; but I have
 
 JO FOREWORD 
 
 been unable to get a complete list from India before 
 these pages go to press. I wish, however, to thank in 
 particular Mr. Janaki Bhusan Singh and Mr. Aukshoy 
 Kumar Ghose for the great assistance which they have 
 given to me in the description of the life and circum- 
 stances of the inhabitants of the district. It is not 
 their fault if this description contains mistakes. It is 
 five years now since I lived in Faridpur, and as 
 I write in England in a desperate haste I have no 
 means of countering the tricks which memory will 
 play. I would ask Indian readers of their charity to 
 remember this when they detect mistakes. 
 
 Now that I have finished the book, I am too 
 well aware how poorly it is written. In apology and 
 extenuation I can only plead that five days are a very 
 short time in which to reduce a orreat mass of statistics 
 to order. I could make no attempt at all at graceful 
 writing ; we know that easy reading is very hard 
 writing. The tables which I have furnished at the 
 end of the book are of design few and concise. If 
 any student is sufficiently interested in the investiga- 
 tions which were made, he will find in Faridpur all the 
 original papers to the extent of a hundred volumes 
 and the detailed tabulations to the extent of a score. 
 They are always open to examination and they con- 
 tain information in detail upon many phases of the 
 economic life of the district with which I have had no 
 time to deal. 
 
 J. C. JACK. 
 
 London, 
 Uciober 8, IC}I^.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The District and its inhabitants, their homes 
 
 and manner of life 13 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 The Domestic Budget f)r^ 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 Income and economic condition of the people 
 
 as revealed by the statistics . ... 72 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 96 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Taxation 113 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Abstract of the Rules and Instructions in 
 accordance with which the economic 
 information was gathered, recorded and 
 tabulated 138 
 
 I. Rules 138 
 
 II. Instructions to Officers .... 144 
 
 HI. Tabulation . 148 
 
 Table I. Population which came under review 150
 
 12 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Table II. (a) Classification of population by 
 
 INCOME and economic CONDITION 
 
 (d) Percentages of Classification 
 
 (c) Average annual income of different 
 
 classes 
 
 Table III. Debt .... 
 (a) General Summary . 
 
 (d) Proportion of families indebted 
 ic) Pitch of indebtedness . 
 
 Table IV. Village Taxation . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 151 
 153 
 
 154 
 
 155 
 
 155 
 156 
 
 157 
 i5« 
 
 Plans of some homesteads in Faridpur 
 
 24-5
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DISTRICT AND ITS INHABITANTS, THEIR 
 HOMES AND MANNER OF LIFE. 
 
 The following pages are written round the few 
 tables of dry statistics which bring this book to a 
 close. The tables are few, because statistics are 
 always unpleasant and will only be swallowed in small 
 doses. The statistics themselves have been extracted 
 from a mass of figures in several volumes and have 
 been selected to illustrate as far as possible the various 
 phases of the economic life of an Indian district. They 
 concern the district or county of Faridpur, which is 
 part of the large Indian province of Bengal and is 
 situated near the coast at the northern angle of the 
 Bay of Bengal. The province of Bengal is nearly as 
 large as Great Britain and contains a greater popula- 
 tion than the United Kingdom. Faridpur itself con- 
 tains an area of 2,464 square miles and a population 
 of 2,121,914 persons. It is therefore as large as the 
 county of Devon and contains more people than any 
 English county except Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 
 contrast, however, to all the more populous counties 
 of England and Scotland, the population is almost 
 entirely rural. There are only two small towns in the 
 whole district, of which the true urban population is not 
 more than 20,000. There are no industries, so that 
 the entire population, with insignificant exceptions, is 
 dependent directly or indirectly upon the produce of 
 the soil for its livelihood : yet the population is nine
 
 14 THE DISTRICT 
 
 hundred to the square mile, far heavier than in any 
 agricultural tract of Europe and almost as heavy as in 
 any industrial tract of the same size. The purpose of 
 these pages is to explain how these people live, to ana- 
 lyse their income and expenditure, and to examine the 
 burden of taxation and indebtedness which they bear. 
 
 It will perhaps help to an understanding of the true 
 nature of the statistics which are presented and 
 reviewed if some description be given of the country 
 and some account be attempted of the homes of its 
 people and the manner of their life. To the ordinary 
 European India conjures up visions of starved and 
 toiling people, dusty plains or gorgeous vegetation 
 under a scorching sun. The delta of the Ganges, 
 although its population is larger than all England's, is 
 forgotten in this picture, for it has none of these 
 features. Yet it is a peculiar country, worth know- 
 ledge and worth description. It is made up of new 
 mud, old mud and marsh ; it contains rivers as large 
 as any in the world, linked together by an amazing 
 network of lesser rivers, streams and ditches ; it mostly 
 disappears under water for several months in the 
 year, yet it grows abundant crops everywhere and 
 supports a very considerable population in very con- 
 siderable idleness. Faridpur is in all these respects 
 a perfect specimen of the delta. 
 
 Faridpur is situated in the upper part of the Ganges 
 delta. The Ganges delta is a very peculiar formation. 
 It is absolutely flat and was in remote times a shallow 
 lagoon of great extent on the edge of the Bay of 
 Bengal. Two huge rivers, the Ganges and the Brah- 
 maputra, flowed into this lagoon from the Himalayas 
 and brought down in their streams an enormous
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 15 
 
 mass of sand, silt and detritus which they had collected 
 in their passage through the heavy woods bordering 
 the slopes of the mountains and the friable soil at their 
 foot. By means of this annual deposit the level of the 
 lagoon was gradually raised until land emerged, ex- 
 tending slowly southward as the north was filled in. 
 When land first appeared above the surface of the 
 lagoon, it was intersected by a network of broad 
 streams through which the water of the rivers flowed 
 to the sea ; but each year its level was raised by 
 a fresh deposit of silt until it had reached the height 
 of an ordinary flood. The land was not, however, 
 uniformly raised, as the parts which bordered the 
 rivers and streams got the greater portion of the silt 
 and the parts which were remote from them got very 
 little ; hollows were thereby formed, and when the 
 rivers should have turned their attention to these 
 hollows their beds had silted and the volume of their 
 deposit had diminished, Faridpur contains tracts which 
 illustrate all stages of formation. In the south-east 
 the land is still below flood-level and broad rivers and 
 countless streams are still building up their banks ; in 
 the south-west the rivers are flanked by wide strips of 
 land which has emerged, but marsh is still predominant ; 
 in the north the land is generally above flood-level, 
 broad rivers have given place to narrow streams which 
 are usually dry, hollows are already small and are 
 slowly disappearing. 
 
 The dry north of Faridpur measures more than 
 a thousand square miles and to the eye it is an 
 infinite series of flat, sandy plains, broken by a large 
 number of old water-courses which are now full of 
 water only at the height of the flood season and at
 
 i6 THE DISTRICT 
 
 other times show dr)^ beds which are merely a few 
 feet below the surface of the banks. In the plains 
 enclosed by these old water-courses there is usually 
 in the centre a depression which still holds water for 
 six or eight months of the year, but in the remaining 
 months is capable of bearing a luxuriant crop. The 
 country has been inhabited for several centuries and 
 the villages are old. The population clusters along 
 the banks of the old water-courses, which are always 
 fringed by a thick belt of fruit and other trees. 
 Scattered houses are rare : on the other hand there 
 is always some orchard or garden between the houses 
 fringing the banks of the streams. Away from the 
 streams villages are found chiefly in the centre of 
 the depressions, where houses have been built only 
 after mounds have been raised to place them above 
 flood-level. In such marshes a village appears as 
 a cluster of houses raised ten or fifteen feet upon 
 little hillocks and in the dry months looks from a 
 distance not unlike a row of ninepins. 
 
 The south-east is much more interesting. It is still 
 in process of formation and is full of rivers which are 
 broad and deep, heavy in the flood season with con- 
 structive silt, yet sufficiently active to work their will 
 upon a land of plastic mud. Here, as is the fashion 
 of the delta, the rivers are washing away mud from 
 one bank and re-forming it on the other with a method 
 so complete and comprehensive that in the entire tract, 
 perhaps 900 square miles in extent, very little of the 
 present land has been in existence a hundred years 
 and not very much for more than fifty years. Probably 
 there has been land and population in all this country 
 iox .five centuries and more ; but so long as the
 
 And its inhabitants 17 
 
 general level of the land remains lower than the 
 pitch of an ordinary flood, the rivers in the fury of 
 the flood season will continue to eat away banks 
 which are made of nothing firmer than mud, to 
 sweep away the old country through which their 
 currents carry them and to raise fresh flats of mud to 
 take its place a few years later. It is a well-know^n 
 law that the course of a river is not a straight line, but 
 a series of oscillations, which must always shift if not 
 confined between banks of rock. Here the banks are 
 of mud so that the rivers can swang about at will ; but 
 although at any one spot there may be land to-day, 
 a river next year and new land a few years later, yet 
 in the total the land is always slowly increasing at the 
 expense of the rivers and the level of the whole tract 
 is always slowly rising. The soil in this portion of 
 the district is very fertile and the population very 
 dense ; but the homesteads are new and orchards of 
 well-grown trees are rarely to be seen. Homesteads 
 are always built upon land which is raised three or four 
 feet, the earth being obtained by cutting a tank or 
 digging a pond beside the site. 
 
 In the south-western part of the district the whole 
 land is a vast marsh, yet able to sustain a large and 
 growing population. In the normal course this land 
 would have been raised many centuries ago by silt 
 from the great rivers, but owing to an abrupt and 
 unexplained change in their courses, those rivers 
 abandoned it and went farther eastward, leaving a few 
 smaller distributaries to fill up the vast basin. It is 
 only within the last century that the population has 
 flocked to this basin, but to such purpose that the 
 dismal swamp now contains 800 people to the square
 
 i8 THE DISTRICT 
 
 mile. For eight months of the year the country is 
 a lake, 700 square miles in extent, whose surface is 
 broken only by the village clumps and by the two 
 narrow strips of land which mark the course of 
 winding streams ; in the other four months large 
 parts dry up and enable crops to be grown upon 
 them, but the centre, away from the rivers, is still 
 marsh and unfit for cultivation. In all this portion 
 of the district the villages are small and cluster 
 round a tank or large pond. When the village was 
 founded the tank was dug first and the earth heaped 
 up until the banks were raised above the level of the 
 marsh. Houses were then built on the top of the 
 banks. In the dry season of the year, when the water 
 in the marsh is very low or sinks into mud, these 
 villages stand up in a rough circle like the crater of 
 a volcano and can be seen for a long distance ; at the 
 height of the floods they appear to be islands floating 
 on the surface of the lake. 
 
 There is no village street in the delta as in England, 
 flanked on both sides by stone or brick houses in rows 
 or pairs, with two or three shops, the village church, 
 the village inn and the village hall or recreation-room. 
 Indeed, in the English sense of the word, there is 
 rarely a village at all, although in several parts of the 
 district the homesteads of the villagers are grouped 
 together in clusters. In the older north the houses 
 usually straggle at irregular intervals along the banks 
 of the streams and are surrounded by orchards or at 
 least by some garden and a few trees. The hamlets 
 in the depressions are also built in some kind of 
 irregular line, but with houses closer together and 
 each raised on a separate mound and usually shaded
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 19 
 
 by several fruit-trees. In the south-western swamps 
 the long' line of homesteads is rarer, although it is 
 always found, with much garden, beside the rivers ; 
 but elsewhere it gives place to the circular formation 
 round a tank, and the houses are fewer and very close 
 together and the trees are very few. In the alluvial 
 south-east the land is too recently formed and too 
 liable to be swept away to encourage the planting 
 of a slow-growing orchard, but the normal line of 
 detached homesteads is often seen, although isolated 
 homesteads built by each cultivator on his own land 
 are no less common. The newer lands are bare of 
 trees and only in the older formations are orchards 
 visible. In all these villages there is rarely a village 
 road, usually a footpath leads from house to house, 
 but often there is not a path at all. Nowhere are 
 houses built of masonry, not a house in the district is 
 semi-detached, nor is there a single row of houses as 
 is the habit in European villages. As the village 
 shop is not a Bengal institution, shops are found 
 only in the markets of the more important centres ; 
 there are no village inns, parish halls, or recreation- 
 rooms, while only rarely is there a place of worship, 
 always the mosque of the Muhammadans. Worship 
 among the Hindus is a family affair celebrated in 
 their own houses, while amongst the Muhammadans 
 it consists of prayers and preaching, which do not 
 necessarily require a mosque, but may be conducted 
 in the open air. 
 
 Nobody in Bengal, whether a cultivator or engaged 
 in any other occupation, lives in a hired house. The 
 peasant or the workman, although paying rent for the 
 land to a landlord, always builds his own house at his 
 
 B 3
 
 20 THE DISTRICT 
 
 own expense. This is the custom with all classes of 
 the community, and I doubt if one man in a thousand 
 in any part of the district lives in a hired house or in 
 a house not erected by himself or at his own expense. 
 This has always seemed to me one of the most effec- 
 tive points of contrast between Bengal and English 
 conditions. The homesteads do not display as much 
 variety in construction or arrangement as might be 
 expected on this account. They conform to a common 
 type amongst all classes of the community and tend 
 also to cover an equal extent of ground. In the 
 average they cover a quarter of an acre of ground in 
 all parts of the district, although in the swamps, where 
 a plinth sometimes 15 or 20 feet high has to be raised, 
 the space is, as might be expected, very much smaller. 
 Within this quarter-acre will usually be found a pond, 
 an orchard and a courtyard, round which several huts 
 with mat walls are constructed. The pond is in some 
 parts of the district an almost universal feature and is 
 everywhere very common. As the land nearly always 
 needs to be raised to place it above flood-level, a pit or 
 ditches would in any case be necessary, but the pond is 
 preferred in order that the women of the household 
 may take their daily bath in privacy — where there is 
 no pond they must go to the public streams. The 
 Bengali is certainly the cleanest race on earth. High 
 and low, rich and poor, old and young, men and 
 women, people of all occupations and all conditions 
 bathe every day, submerging themselves even in the 
 coldest weather from head to foot. The pond is also 
 used for cleaning pots and pans and washing clothes 
 and even for drinking, as the cultivators generally 
 prefer its water to well-water, although in the north
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 21 
 
 wells are common enough. The pond is always cut 
 to a formal shape, usually a parallelogram, sometimes 
 a square ; the banks are well raised and usually planted 
 with fruit-trees. The garden is popular wherever it 
 is possible ; but in the swamp villages and in the new 
 alluvium it is naturally not to be found. In the north 
 and in villages along the river banks elsewhere, every 
 other house has a good garden, which contains several 
 fruit and timber trees, besides plaintains and a clump 
 of the indispensable bamboo. The homestead often 
 has some kind of a hedge round it, and a patch is 
 usually sown with tobacco or vegetables for the family 
 consumption. 
 
 The homestead is neither a cottage nor a house as 
 Europe knows them, that is to say, a building con- 
 taining several rooms and probably two floors under 
 one roof. It never consists of a single hut — even the 
 poorest families always have a separate kitchen — and 
 the huts, being cheaply made of materials grown on 
 the land or locally obtained, are never strong enough 
 to carry an upper story. A prosperous family builds 
 larger huts and more of them ; thus most cultivators 
 in comfortable circumstances have five or six separate 
 huts in their homesteads. Other classes of the com- 
 munity plan their houses in the same style, those 
 who are prosperous usually erecting four or six huts, 
 those who are poor contenting themselves with two or 
 three. It is only in the main streets of towns or 
 trading centres that a single hut is found sufficient 
 and even then it is usual to contrive a^'detached 
 kitchen. In the common model the huts surround 
 an open courtyard, the dwelling-rooms often having 
 verandahs opening into it. The largest hut will be
 
 22 THE DISTRICT 
 
 used as a parlour in which guests are received ; no 
 friends or strangers will be admitted to any of the 
 other huts, which will usually be smaller and be used 
 as bedrooms by the family. Each hut will be raised 
 on an earthen plinth one or two feet above the level of 
 the courtyard. The most usual arrangement is to 
 place the parlour facing down the avenue which leads 
 to the homestead. All the huts will have doors, 
 which will, however, only be closed at night. These 
 houses are very rarely constructed of masonry, not so 
 much on the ground of expense, but partly because 
 the landlord will not permit it and partly because there 
 is a preference in favour of mat houses on the score of 
 healthiness. This preference is certainly well grounded, 
 as even without windows and with doors shut sufficient 
 air can get in to keep the atmosphere sweet, while in 
 so mild a climate as that of Bengal protection against 
 the weather is unnecessary. If houses were constructed 
 of masonry, they would necessarily be very much 
 smaller, and in every way it is wiser for the people to 
 continue to build them of matting. It may be men- 
 tioned that Englishmen with large incomes prefer to 
 build houses with mat walls than to live in the smaller 
 and hotter brick houses as in Europe. The matting 
 of which the walls are made is woven of reeds or 
 grasses in large sections and is usually very tough. 
 The poorer cultivators weave it of jute sticks, which 
 are neither so durable nor so successful as a protection 
 against the sun or the rain. In the houses of the more 
 prosperous cultivators the door is usually made of 
 wood and the posts inside the house to which the mat 
 walls are nailed are substantial beams, but in the houses 
 of the poorer classes the walls are often carried on
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 23 
 
 bamboo poles and the doors are often made of matting 
 like the rest of the house. The floor is made of earth, 
 which is beaten with a pole until it is absolutely level 
 and then covered over with a layer of liquid mud. 
 This dries quite hard and gives a surface which remains 
 for a considerable period as firm and level as a con- 
 crete floor ; when it breaks up, inequalities are levelled 
 again and a fresh coating of liquid mud is run over the 
 surface. Most of the poorer houses are thatched, but 
 a very large proportion of the cultivators now roof 
 two or three of their huts with sheets of corrugated 
 iron, which are sold in the larger markets. In some 
 parts of the country tin-roofed houses are a common 
 feature of the landscape and almost every homestead 
 has at least one hut roofed with tin ; but communica- 
 tions are so bad in the interior that, away from the 
 single line of railway or the steamer routes on the big 
 rivers, transport is a great difficulty and tin roofs are 
 much rarer. In the district only one homestead in 
 every two hundred has a brick house, but one in every 
 seven has a tin-roofed hut and in the south-east one in 
 every four. I n the west, however, where communications 
 are at their worst, only one homestead in every twenty 
 has a tin-roofed hut, despite a higher level of prosperity. 
 The advantage of a tin roof lies in the protection it 
 offers against fire, which in the dry hot months is very 
 prone to attack a thatched roof. It is much hotter 
 and less healthy than thatch and affords no better 
 defence against rain, if the thatch is well made. The 
 people themselves say that thatched roofs keep a house 
 warmer in the winter. 
 
 The figures show that the average homestead of 
 the district amongst all classes contains two separate
 
 
 
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 26 THE DISTRICT 
 
 huts besides kitchens and cattle-sheds. The home- 
 steads of the cultivators tend to be largrer than the 
 homesteads of those engaged in other occupations. 
 I have appended some sketch-plans of homesteads 
 inhabited by families of different degrees of prosperity 
 in different occupations. It will be seen that in the 
 poorest homes the floor-space is very considerable for 
 a family of five, while in those of prosperous cultivators 
 it is more than ample. It is probable that half the 
 population lives in homesteads with more than 800 
 square feet of floor-space, built round a courtyard also 
 800 square feet in area. As the roofs are never very 
 low and the huts are always very airy, it will be seen 
 that the home of a Faridpur cultivator is at least 
 healthy. 
 
 From an English point of view the furniture in an 
 Indian house is very scanty. In many a house there 
 is no table or chair, sofa, bedstead or cupboard, and 
 the rooms appear absolutely bare. The walls are 
 matting without attempt to paint or decorate with 
 pictures, while there is no ceiling, so that the rafters 
 on which the roof is carried are as visible as the posts 
 by which the walls are supported. Sometimes there 
 are no windows ; and, if windows exist, they contain no 
 glass, but are closed by a shutter of wood or matting. 
 No carpet is spread upon the floor. The absence of 
 furniture is perhaps more a question of taste than of 
 anything else, although climate has some Influence. 
 The furniture in an Enorlishman's house in Eastern 
 Bengal is very much what he would have in his house 
 in England, but carpets give place to matting and 
 curtains often vanish, chiefly because carpets and 
 curtains collect insects and mosquitoes, while sofas.
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 27 
 
 chairs and bedsteads are lightly made, often of 
 cane. A wealthy Bengali, unless he keeps one room 
 furnished in the English style for entertaining English 
 guests, has as little furniture as a member of the 
 poorer classes. Cupboards are rarely to be found even 
 in the houses of the most wealthy ; linen is usually 
 kept in boxes or chests, often richly decorated with 
 brass work. A Bengali always eats off the ground 
 from a sheet or mat and squatting on his haunches. 
 He will not eat off a table, even if his house contains 
 one. If he sits on a chair at all, he selects a very low 
 stool, for to sit on a chair of the ordinary size is to him 
 not at all restful ; when he is tired and requires a rest 
 he will squat on his haunches, however many chairs he 
 has in his house. To beds there is not the same 
 objection, but of all articles of furniture bedsteads are 
 the most expensive and cheap bedsteads are of little 
 use. In truth the absence of internal decoration and of 
 furniture is not a question of money, but a question 
 of taste. The wealthiest Bengali who is untouched by 
 foreign influences keeps as bare a house as his poorer 
 neighbours and eschews ceilings, painted walls and 
 furniture as completely as they do. 
 
 Perhaps the best means of conveying some idea of 
 the interior of an Indian house and of the life led by 
 the people who inhabit it is to describe exactly what 
 was found in a few houses occupied by families of dif- 
 ferent classes. The homestead of a cultivator should be 
 examined first, for cultivators form nearly 80 per cent, 
 of the population. The huts will vary in size and 
 number according to the prosperity of the family, but 
 six huts appear to be the normal number, of which 
 one will be a cowshed, one will be a kitchen and
 
 28 THE DISTRICT 
 
 exclusively used as such, one will be a parlour for the 
 entertainment of guests, one will be the ordinary 
 dwell inof-room and the remainder will be used as 
 bedrooms. The less prosperous cultivators do with- 
 out one or other of the bedrooms or without the 
 parlour. In a homestead of this kind taken at random 
 the kitchen contained two clay fire-places and a dozen 
 earthen jars of large size filled with different kinds 
 of eatables, while hanging from the walls were the 
 cooking-pots made of brass, an iron pan, a mortar and 
 pestle for husking purposes, a few knives and a jar 
 full of water. The parlour contained a verandah, in 
 which was placed a huge bedstead made of wood 
 which is used in the daytime as a table or couch, as it 
 has a flat wooden top. Inside the parlour there was 
 a large wooden chest and ten large jars containing 
 rice : on the walls hung a row of little brass pots and 
 empty bottles. Raised from the ground and hanging 
 from the roof there was a mat ledge, which is used as 
 a cupboard. This is of large size and heaped upon it 
 is all the bedding of the family — pillows, sheets, and 
 blankets — and all the clean linen for the use of both 
 men and women. Another shelf supported an ink-pot, 
 a looking-glass and a brush and comb. Several bags 
 and a few jars containing biscuits, sweetmeats and 
 betel nut hung from different parts of the wall. On 
 another shelf were some neat clay figures as ornaments 
 and a lamp. A pair of shoes, several pairs of slippers, 
 a fishing-rod and a fishing-net completed the contents 
 of the hut. In one of the bedrooms there were 
 a bedstead, a mat shelf to carry the usual earthen 
 jars and a spinning-wheel. The other bedroom con- 
 tained much the same furniture. One of the huts was
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 29 
 
 used as a dinin(j-room ; it contained nothing except 
 a shelf to hold fuel and a few sheets for the family to 
 squat upon when eating. Along the wall were five 
 brass plates, four brass cups and two glasses. The 
 paddles for the boat of the family are kept in a corner. 
 The best hut and the chief dwelling-room in the 
 homestead had walls of split bamboo woven into a very 
 artistic pattern. In the verandah at the door were 
 two earthen jars, two feet high, besides a great deal of 
 fishing-tackle and several garments. Inside the hut 
 there were one tin trunk and one wooden chest as well 
 as four cushions, several cane baskets, a large brass jar 
 and a large pile of the best clothes of the family, in- 
 cluding their fez caps and shoes. In one corner there 
 was a lamp on a lamp-stand and there were the usual 
 small jars for betel nut, betel leaves and lime, with 
 which every guest is entertained ; along the walls was 
 the usual row of earthen pots containing rice, vege- 
 tables, condiments, sweetmeats and other foodstuffs. 
 
 Generally speaking, the houses of all cultivators 
 are similarly filled, the most conspicuous features 
 being fishing-tackle of all kinds and the rows of jars in 
 which rice and other food is stored. If there are any 
 chairs and caned stools, they are usually kept in the 
 parlour, one or two at the most being kept in the 
 general dwelling-house. In the poorer homesteads 
 the most obvious signs of poverty will be holes in the 
 walls of the huts and the absence of brass plates, pots 
 and jars. There are rarely any pictures or prints on 
 the walls except coloured photographs of the King and 
 Queen, although in Hindu houses pictures of gods are 
 sometimes found. The houses of non-cultivators of 
 the working-classes are furnished in the same fashion.
 
 30 THE DISTRICT 
 
 The huts are usually not so numerous or not so large, 
 because the non-cultivator does not, like the cultivator, 
 store rice and other foodstuffs for the consumption of 
 a year. Occasionally a separate hut is kept entirely as 
 a granar), in which case earthen jars containing rice 
 are dispensed with in other rooms of the homestead. 
 
 The first comment which springs to the lips on an 
 inspection of these interiors is that the Bengali house 
 seems rather a store and a place to sleep in than a place 
 to live in. These are indeed its uses. The menkind, who 
 rise at dawn and go to bed soon after sundown, spend 
 little time inside their houses except at night, as by 
 favour of a mild climate they can live in the courtyards 
 or the verandahs on most days of the year. Thus, 
 although close-woven mats with a polished surface are 
 kept in most houses as covers for the floor, they are 
 usually spread in the courtyard and not within the 
 huts. The womenkind spend most of the day inside 
 the house, but their comfort and their tastes are little 
 considered by the men ; and if they were, the women 
 must improve them by the light of nature, for they are 
 not permitted to visit the houses of their neighbours. 
 This accounts for the absence of all attempt to beautify 
 or make comfortable and for the indiscriminate use of 
 every room, even parlour and principal dwelling-hut, as 
 bedroom as well as livincr-room ; while the use of the 
 house as a store-room accounts for the rows of jars, great 
 and small, containing all varieties of food, for the fishing- 
 tackle and for the clothes, linen and shoes which are to 
 be seen in every room. Wooden cupboards are wisely 
 avoided because of the countless moths and other 
 destructive insects w^hich they attract in so hot and 
 damp a climate and because of the rats and mice
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 31 
 
 which tliey too effectively conceal. Despite their 
 absence there is not that untidiness which might 
 have been expected. The garments of the family are 
 chiefly cotton sheets, which fold neatly and take up 
 little space. 
 
 The ideal domestic standard of Bengali society in 
 these country districts may be shown by a description 
 of the homes of a well-to-do Muhammadan gentleman 
 who sees somethine of the officials and has travelled 
 in other parts of India and of a prosperous Brahman 
 amono^st Hindus. The home of the Muhammadan is 
 placed in the centre of a large garden, which covers 
 nearly an acre and a half and contains a splendid pond 
 or tank. There are five main huts, all with walls of 
 matting, but of the best kind of matting, the larger 
 with tin roofs and verandahs, the smaller with thatched 
 roofs. The fruit-trees in the garden surround the 
 huts on all sides and conceal them entirely from out- 
 side view. An avenue leads up to the guest-house, 
 which is the only room into which the outside world 
 can penetrate. This is divided by a corridor of mat- 
 ting into three rooms, each of which has a separate 
 door on to the verandah and several windows with 
 iron bars. The verandah has a neat wooden railing. 
 In the hall there is a hanging lamp, a writing-table 
 with writing materials, a shelf with a large number 
 of books, a long bench upon which books are usually 
 placed, a small round table, a praying-mat, two chairs, 
 a steel trunk and a cane stool. Formerly there 
 was a carpet, but when the tables and chairs were 
 introduced the carpet was stow^ed away in the trunk 
 and matting substituted for it. There is the usual jar 
 of water and glasses which are to be found in every
 
 32 THE DISTRICT 
 
 house. On the walls hang" the clothes of the family ; 
 in this case the clothes for ceremonial occasions. 
 There are also two war maps and some war pictures. 
 In a corner of the room there are two wooden bed- 
 steads with large pillows and coloured quilts. In 
 another room, where a shelf carries a copy of the 
 Koran, the Muhammadan Bible, there is a bench, 
 a steel trunk and a wooden chest on which lie several 
 novels ; on the floor there is a rug, and in a corner 
 there is a bedstead with bedding and quilt upon it. 
 Facing the door there is a large mirror and beside 
 it a large wooden chest containing a carpet, table-cloths 
 and dish-covers, dresses for ceremonial occasions and 
 clothing for the winter ; on the top lie two decorated 
 hookahs from Northern India. On a matting shelf 
 there are a dozen brass pots for use when necessary. 
 The furniture in the third room is very similar. 
 
 The second hut, which is walled wath coloured 
 matting in an oriental pattern, has a verandah and is 
 used as the living-room of the family. It contains 
 a camp table, a cane chair, a filter and a bamboo stand 
 for four water jars, two cane stools, some large shelves 
 of matting which hang from the roof and carry a 
 variety of household requisites in the usual jars and 
 all the crockery of the family, which is here of china 
 or glass. In the centre of the room there is a bed- 
 stead and in a corner a brass lamp, a lamp-stand, two 
 or three lanterns, two hookahs and two brass spittoons. 
 Along the walls are three other bedsteads with mat- 
 tresses, quilts and pillows and a cupboard which con- 
 tains the work-a-day clothes of the family. One of 
 the other huts is merely a bedroom with bedsteads, 
 trunks and a large supply of linen of all kinds. The
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 33 
 
 spare foot-gear of the family Is kept here, besides a 
 number of earthen jars containing the best rice. This 
 is the bedroom of the mistress of the house, and it is 
 curious to see that her toilet aids consist of one small 
 looking-glass, one comb, a few hairpins, three or four 
 pieces of black ribbon, one ball of thread and two 
 needles. Another house in this homestead, which 
 belonged to a son who died recently, is now in great 
 disorder. It contains three benches, a chair and a stool, 
 one cupboard and the usual bedstead, besides boxes 
 and trunks which are full of the clothes which the son 
 used to wear ; he was something of a dandy and had 
 many. The fifth house is the kitchen. It has the 
 usual clay hearth wiih two mortars for husking purposes, 
 several brass pots and two brass plates, and all the 
 other crockery of the family — china plates and cups and 
 glasses. Two small houses in the rear are used as 
 a cowshed and a goatshed, the latter containing two 
 large crates in which poultry are kept. 
 
 The Muhammadan was a man of the old school and 
 had not received a modern education ; but his home 
 shows more traces of western influence in its furniture 
 and arrangement than is usual amongst the most 
 advanced and educated of Hindus. Educated Muham- 
 madans are even more modern in their tastes and 
 appear to have a natural instinct for the manners 
 and social customs of the West. 
 
 At the risk of being wearisome I will complete the 
 picture of domestic life in the district by describing 
 the home of a Hindu of high caste in easy circum- 
 stances. He is not by any means one of the wealthiest 
 inhabitants in the district, but he is a professional man 
 with a modern education and a leader of the ortho-
 
 34 THE DISTRICT 
 
 dox community, and his home will illustrate how far 
 a Hindu imbued with the new western education is 
 willing^ to amaloamate western and eastern domestic 
 arrangements. He lives on the outskirts of a small 
 country town and corresponds roughly in social posi- 
 tion to a doctor living in an English country town 
 with an income of between ;^500 and ;^iooo per year. 
 In this Brahman's household there are five adult males, 
 five adult females, three boys and four girls, a total 
 of seventeen people. The houses and garden cover 
 2| acres. In the homestead there are altogether eight 
 separate huts of different sizes, besides a cowshed, the 
 principal hut opening on a formal rose garden in 
 the English style. The buildings are surrounded on 
 all sides by land which is half a meadow and half an 
 orchard, the fruit-trees in some measure screening 
 them from view. An avenue leads to the principal 
 dwelling-house and the guest-house. There are two 
 courtyards, the larger and outer surrounded by five 
 huts containing all the living-rooms, and the smaller 
 opening from the larger and surrounded by the four 
 smaller huts, two of which are kitchens, one a bed- 
 room and the fourth the cowshed. Behind the main 
 courtyard there is a large pond, shaped formally like 
 a parallelogram and covering nearly i-g- acres, the banks 
 of which are high and grow tall thatching-grass and 
 a profusion of fruit-trees. This is the bathing-place 
 of the family, and a flight of masonry steps leads to the 
 water. The guest-house is somewhat apart from the 
 courtyard, and behind it there is another large pond 
 from which the drinking-water of the family is obtained. 
 Both of the ponds were excavated mainly in order to 
 raise the land of the ""arden and houses well above 
 
 t>'
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 35 
 
 flood-level ; but a pond must in any case have been 
 made to preserve privacy for the daily bath of the 
 ladies of the household. In such a low-lying country 
 as Eastern Bengal half of the land upon which the resi- 
 dence is placed must be sacrificed to a pond in order 
 to raise the remaining half to a height which permits 
 life to be maintained in health and comfort. Cultiva- 
 tors dig this pond themselves, but to the upper classes 
 the cost of raising the land is a very large part of 
 the expense of building a residence. 
 
 In internal arrangement and furniture the home of 
 this professional man is very little different from the 
 homes of cultivators ; in size and in strength and 
 quality of materials it is better than the ordinary culti- 
 vator can afford, but no better than the more prosperous 
 cultivators can and do provide for themselves. It con- 
 tains in the same way a bewildering profusion of 
 earthen and brass jars, as it is the custom of the upper 
 class to buy rice for the whole year when the price is 
 low, as well as supplies of other food for long periods. 
 Very few homes contain a separate granary, chiefly 
 owing to the depredations of rats, and no houses con- 
 tain store-rooms or pantries, so that all the vast amount 
 of food-stuff required by a large family must be stored 
 in large or small jars which are scattered over all the 
 huts of the residence, as many being found in the 
 bedrooms as in the kitchen and dwelling-rooms. In 
 this particular residence there are two kitchens, the 
 smaller of which is used only to fry rice and not to cook 
 the main meals of the family. The larger kitchen has 
 strong walls of matting and a roof of corrugated iron. 
 It is divided into two parts, of which the outer, a wide 
 verandah, is used as the dining-room of the family and 
 
 c 2,
 
 36 THE DISTRICT 
 
 the inner, separated from the verandah by a strong wall, 
 as the kitchen. In this kitchen there are five hearths 
 for cooking and a brave array of cooking-pots and pans 
 of iron, copper and brass, besides several metal water- 
 jugs, sixteen cups and plates and eight tumblers, all of 
 brass or of bronze alloy, as the Hindu prefers to eat 
 off metal. Of the other huts, one is the guest-room, 
 two others are the main dwelling-rooms of the family, 
 although used also as bedrooms, one is exclusively used 
 as a bedroom, and two smaller huts are used partly as 
 bedrooms and partly as store-rooms. All these huts 
 are strongly walled, the three larger partly of timber, 
 and all have roofs of corrugated iron. All contain 
 bedsteads (or taktaposh), the large, low, square, wooden 
 tables which are used as beds at night and as tables in 
 the daytime. The walls of all are hung with garments 
 and linen of the family, while along the floor in rows 
 stand earthen and brass jars. From the ceiling hang 
 the large matting shelves upon which supplies of linen 
 are promiscuously heaped at the side of plates and 
 cups and jars of sweetmeats and spices, for the Hindu 
 has much less idea of neatness and order than the 
 Muhammadan. Material for chewing pd)i (betel) has 
 a conspicuous place in every hut, while usually a shelf 
 will carry articles of toilet. 
 
 It would be tedious to describe in detail the con- 
 tents of any of these smaller huts, as a description 
 of the guest-house and the main dwelling-house will 
 serve as an indication of the contents of the rest. It 
 may be said, however, that in the whole residence 
 twelve huge, twenty-five large and forty small earthen 
 jars were counted, besides twenty-tw^o large and fifteen 
 small brass jars and twelve baskets for holding vege- 
 tables, fish and fruits.
 
 AND ITS TNIIAIUTANTS 37 
 
 The wide verandah of the guest-house contains one 
 chair, a long stool and two benches. Inside, a portion 
 is walled off to serve as a bedroom for a guest, but 
 it contains only a single taktaposh ; the rest of the 
 house contains two taktaposh, which are used chiefly 
 as tables, as this is the office of the master of the 
 house ; but they will serve as bedsteads in the event 
 of guests arriving. In the main room there is another 
 chair and two long low benches for visitors of the 
 lower classes, as it is a custom in Bengal for people 
 of all classes to call on the well-to-do and pass the 
 time of day. The room contains a bookcase, three 
 lamps and several fishing-nets. The articles more 
 immediately necessary for the welcome of guests are 
 five hookahs and smoking materials, the hookahs 
 being scrupulously kept apart for the different classes 
 of the community, two for the Brahman caste, two for 
 Hindus of lower castes and one for Muhammadan 
 visitors ; in no case will any of these be used by 
 people of another rank or denomination. A visitor 
 is offered a smoke from his own particular hookah, just 
 as a visitor in China is offered a cup of tea, or he is 
 served with a leaf containing betel-nut and lime, which 
 is as popular with high-caste Hindus in Bengal as 
 chewing-gum is with Americans. Another interesting 
 feature is a row of shoes and sandals ranged along the 
 wall, which are offered for the use of guests. 
 
 The main dwelling-house is a very large room, flanked 
 by two corridors, which are separated from the interior 
 by mat partitions, and with broad verandahs on the 
 north and south. It has altogether nine windows, each 
 of which is carefully fenced with iron bars. One side 
 of the room is used chiefly by the adult men of the
 
 38 THE DISTRICT 
 
 family and the other by the boys. Ahhough this is 
 the principal dwelling-room of the family, yet the floor 
 is the usual smooth mud, not covered with either mat 
 or carpet. On the boys' side of the house there is 
 a writing-desk, clock, bookcase and two small wooden 
 chests, no chairs or stool : on the men's side there is 
 a large easy chair, a long bench and a footstool, 
 a writing-table and a large clock, two bookcases, one 
 of which has a glass front and both of which are well 
 filled, chiefly with novels and religious books, but the 
 glass bookcase also with a shelf of the wonderfully 
 modelled and painted clay figures representing Hindu 
 deities. There are, besides, an iron chest to contain 
 jewellery and valuables, three steel cash boxes, four tin 
 trunks and one huge wooden chest which contains the 
 plate, valuable crockery and richer garments of the 
 family. On the walls there are several gaudy prints, 
 chiefly mythological or religious in character. The 
 corridors which contain only bedsteads and clothes are 
 used as a bedroom by most of the family. There 
 are seven prints on the walls, four of religious sub- 
 jects, one of Queen Victoria and the other two of 
 English women. In the verandah are a bicycle and 
 a tennis bat. 
 
 The life of the cultivator in Eastern Bengal is in 
 many ways a very happy life. Nature is bountiful to 
 him, the soil of his little farm yields in such abundance 
 that he is able to meet all his desires without excessive 
 work. He can produce the food of his own family 
 and sufficient to purchase everything else which he 
 requires from a few acres of land that he can cultivate 
 unaided without overwork. The whole of his labour 
 is over in three months if he grows a rice crop only.
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 39 
 
 He may take a second crop out of the land by sowing 
 a spring or autumn crop. If he sows a spring crop, he 
 pays it but Httle attention and only for a very short 
 period, while if he sows an autumn crop he sows it 
 only on a portion of his land and thereby reduces his 
 work. In those parts of the country in which jute is 
 grown he works at two seasons of the year, growing 
 rice on one portion of his land and jute on another ; 
 but many of the cultivators content themselves with 
 the winter rice crop and so put all their labour into 
 the months of March, April and May. The harvest, 
 which most of those who can afford it get in by hiring 
 the labour of others, takes place in November. If they 
 have decided to grow a spring crop, they will spend 
 a day or two in December in preparing the ground and 
 in planting the seed and will give very little further 
 attention to it. If they grow the autumn crop of jute, 
 they will need to spend much labour in July and 
 August at the time of harvest in steeping and stripping 
 the fibre. This work will not fill the whole of the day, 
 but will be sufficient to occupy their energies for a few 
 hours of every day during a month or six weeks. The 
 time-table of the cultivator, therefore, when his land is 
 unfit for jute, shows three months' hard work and nine 
 months' idleness ; if he grows jute as well as rice, he 
 will have an additional six weeks' work in July and 
 August. These are not conditions of which he can 
 reasonably complain. 
 
 During the months of March, April and May, when 
 he is really hard at work, the cultivator will get up at 
 sunrise about five o'clock, smoke for a few minutes at 
 his hookah and go forth to his field with his plough 
 and cattle, where he will plough in the heavy soil until
 
 40 THE DISTRICT 
 
 his children arrive with his hookah and tobacco. From 
 that time until 9 or lo o'clock he will work and smoke 
 by turns. The children will bring him his breakfast 
 to the fields about 10 o'clock and after breakfast he 
 will continue his ploughing until noon. As a usual 
 thing the breakfast consists of the rice cooked the 
 evening before, heated up and mixed with green 
 pepper (panthd). When his work is over at midday 
 he goes off with his children for a bathe in the nearest 
 river or stream, or in the pond near his house. He 
 then returns to his house and eats the midday meal 
 which his women-folk have prepared for him. This 
 consists of rice mixed with a liquid preparation of 
 pulses {dal) and a curry made of vegetables and fish. 
 After his midday meal he will go to sleep for an hour 
 or two and set out for his field about 3 or 4 o'clock, 
 v/hen he will engage himself in either harrowing or 
 weeding. He will work in the field until dark and 
 sometimes even later, if the field be close to the home- 
 stead ; ordinarily, however, he is too superstitious and 
 too much afraid of ghosts to work in the dark. On 
 return to his house he will wash again, and if the night 
 is, as usual, fine and balmy, sit on a stool in his court- 
 yard and smoke hookah after hookah while his 
 neighbours drop in to have a chat about the crops. 
 At 8 or 8.30 they will go off to their evening meal and 
 he to his, very much the same food being eaten as at 
 the midday meal. After his meal is finished he will 
 smoke for a short time and retire to rest usually about 
 9 or 9.30, He sleeps on a blanket or sheet on the floor 
 of his hut, although some of the prosperous cultivators 
 sleep on beds with or without mattresses, and often 
 with a mosquito curtain.
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 4' 
 
 At other seasons of the year the cultivator has 
 very Httle work in his fields and rarely pays a visit 
 to them. If he has sown jute or an autumn crop, 
 the ploughing has also been finished in April, but he 
 will be busy with it at the harvest time in July and 
 August. The harvest of the autumn rice crop is a 
 simple operation taking only a few days, but the harvest 
 of the jute crop is much more laborious. He has to 
 cut it by degrees, steep it in some neighbouring water, 
 which lies everywhere after the torrential rains at that 
 season of the year, wash it and strip the fibre ; all of 
 which will occupy him for perhaps a month from early 
 morning till the afternoon. He rarely pays a visit 
 to his fields after the midday meal. 
 
 In the winter, from December to February, he is 
 only engaged in the harvesting of the winter rice-crop, 
 or perhaps, if he sows a spring crop, he may spend one 
 or two days in ploughing and harrowing the ground 
 and a few hours in February in harvesting the crop. 
 The winter rice-crop is cut by hand by a small hook 
 sickle. It is exhausting labour, as the reaper has to 
 squat down and bend to it. However, the owner 
 always hires a few men and employs his children with 
 them so as to finish it in a few days ; even when 
 he has much land he arranges to finish harvesting 
 within a week. He provides the hired labourers with 
 breakfast and supplies them with tobacco to smoke 
 in their frequent intervals of rest. They work until 
 the early afternoon and receive as wages one-sixth 
 part of the crop. After returning from the field 
 he will take his delayed midday meal and occupy 
 himself in the evening with thrashing the paddy in 
 his courtyard. The cattle are tied to a central stake
 
 42 THE DISTRICT 
 
 in the threshing floor, round which the paddy is piled, 
 and are driven by him round and round until the 
 ear is completely separated from the stalk. The stalk 
 is then removed and the ear collected and passed 
 through a sieve, when it is made over to his women- 
 folk to husk. He does not forget the old injunction, 
 ' Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the 
 corn '. Next morning at dawn, his first duty is to 
 apportion the crop between himself and his labourers. 
 In the east and south of Faridpur the whole of the rice 
 harvest in many villages is cut by cultivators hired from 
 neighbouring districts such as Nadia, who are lodged 
 and fed by the owner for the week or fortnight during 
 which they are employed. In the meantime he himself 
 takes boat and goes off with a party of his neighbours 
 to the fertile lands of Bakarganj and Mymensingh, 
 where the cultivators are much too prosperous and much 
 too proud to harvest their own crop and always import 
 labour from other districts for the purpose. Here he 
 gets his food and one-fifth of the crop as wages, the 
 crop being so luxuriant that his share supplies his 
 family with rice for the year and far outweighs the 
 portion of his own crop which goes as wages to its 
 harvesters. 
 
 During the rest of the winter the cultivators spend 
 their days in comparative idleness. If there is water 
 in the streams or marshes they go out fishing with rod 
 or trap, and they always spend much of their time in 
 mending their fishing-tackle to be of use in the rains, 
 when fishing is at its best. They also spend no little 
 time at this season of the year in repairing their houses 
 and in thatching such as require it. For the rest of 
 their time they either smoke away the day or attend
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 43 
 
 one of the frequent markets and gossip with their 
 fellows whom they find there. 
 
 During the dismal period of the rains, from July to 
 September the cultivators spend much of their time in 
 fishing or in visiting friends. At that season of the 
 year water is everywhere, deep lakes forming in all 
 depressions, the rivers and streams overflowing their 
 banks, and water lying to the depth of a foot even in 
 the highest field. Fish, both large and small, are innu- 
 merable, and some of the larger fish come swimming 
 over the fields and are to be caught there. During this 
 season of the year practically all men in the district 
 go a-fishing, for which they have a variety of con- 
 trivances in rods, spears, nets, traps and baskets. With 
 a rod, which is usually baited with smaller fish or grass- 
 hoppers, they tempt the bigger fish in the streams, but 
 although fishing with a rod is an amusement eminently 
 suited to their indolent natures, they are even more 
 fond of spearing fish from a boat. Two or three will go 
 together in a dug-out paddling over the fields, one will 
 steer and the others standing in the bows will fling the 
 spear at any fish seen moving through the shallow water. 
 The spear is weighted with a barbed hook at the end 
 (sometimes with one, sometimes three and sometimes 
 seven barbs) and is thrown with wonderful accuracy, 
 rarely missing its mark completely. This form of 
 fishing is only possible on windless days, as the fish do 
 not come over the fields when the shallow water is 
 much ruffled into ripples. On other days the cultivator 
 sets traps or nets, made of bamboo or string, with 
 a pocket or purse in which the fish are caught. He 
 visits them in the morning and evening with a basket 
 and collects his catch. Another method of fishing in
 
 44 TH?: DISTRICT 
 
 the fields which is very popular is the use of dome- 
 shaped baskets which are open at the base. All the 
 villagers collect, each bringing a trap of this shape, and 
 walk alone the shallow water in the field in line with 
 the traps in front of them. The traps are dropped 
 simultaneously on the bed and no gap is left between 
 them, so that the whole line is scoured. Any number 
 of small fish are caught in this way and as the field is 
 swept to a finish very few of the fish can get away. In 
 the smaller streams other means are adopted besides 
 the rod for catching fish. Most days and every night 
 several nets and traps can be seen in every stream. The 
 cultivator may walk along the bank with a net shaped 
 like a lacrosse or butterfly net and attached to a bam- 
 boo pole. He will scoop it upwards through the water 
 and with wonderful quickness fling any fish caught in it 
 on to the bank. Or he may use a net shaped like 
 a parachute and weighted all round the hem, holding 
 it by a long rope attached to the crown. He will swing 
 this out from the bank with a rapid jerk and, if he is 
 dexterous, it will open wide and fall level on the water, 
 when the weights on the end will gradually sink down, 
 catching any fish which may be underneath in the 
 meshes. Often he nets fish from a boat with nets 
 which are shaped like large purses or bags and are 
 fitted to the prow with a bamboo pole rising up as 
 a lever. The boat is driven along at a rapid pace with 
 the net spread out under the water; as soon as the 
 fish is caught the bamboo pole swings slightly forward, 
 whereupon the attendant at the prow jerks it back, 
 raising the net out of the water and securing the fish. 
 In the larger rivers and especially in the southern part 
 of the district fishing from a dinghy, a large canoe, is
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 45 
 
 very popular with all classes, the butterfly type of net 
 being used by hand or with a rope, or more frequently 
 an enormous net the size of a sail, which is fixed like 
 a sail to a bamboo pole rising from the centre of the 
 boat. This net is triangular in shape and rests upon 
 three bamboo poles, which are secured to each other 
 at the ends, the one which is used as a mast being 
 fixed in a movable socket so that the whole net can 
 be dipped over and sunk into the water. After it 
 has been in a minute or two it is raised up and the 
 fish secured which have been caught in its ample 
 folds. It may be imagined what dexterity and water- 
 manship are necessary to keep a long dug-out or 
 canoe on an even keel and driving forward with such 
 a weight swung over one of the sides. But this form 
 of fishing is very popular in the great rivers of the 
 south, which at the height of the rains on a breezy day 
 present a most lively scene, the fishing fleets of the 
 different villages collecting in hundreds, each boat with 
 a triangular sail of many colours bellying in the breeze, 
 each with a steersman standing at the helm to guide it 
 as it drives rapidly before the wind, and each with 
 a fisherman crouching intently over the prow, ready to 
 jerk the net by pole or rope as soon as he discovers 
 that a victim has been caught. The extent to which 
 the villagers are devoted to fishing will be shown by 
 a cursory glance inside the huts of any homestead, 
 where rods, spears, traps and nets will often be seen 
 of twelve varieties and rarely of less than six. 
 
 Once a week during the rains, if any marshy country 
 is near, the cultivators will go off for the whole day 
 in a party of five or six, each in his own boat, to cut 
 marsh orrass for the cattle. This is a more succulent 
 
 o
 
 46 THE DISTRICT 
 
 food than might be expected and is a useful variant 
 to the straw of the rice-crop. When water is every- 
 where, the cattle find little grass to eat and without 
 such marsh grass are apt to lose condition very 
 rapidly. 
 
 Another amusement of the cultivator clurino- the dull 
 season of July to September is a visit to his friends 
 and relatives in other villages. This is more common 
 amongst Muhammadan than Hindu villagers. When 
 he visits a relative he will stay in his house, if there is 
 room, as well as take his meals with him, but usually 
 when he visits a friend he will only eat with him. On 
 these visits he takes the entire family with him in 
 a boat which is somewhat larger than the dinghy and 
 must usually be hired, although many of the more 
 prosperous cultivators possess one. This boat is about 
 15 feet long and 4 feet in beam and carries towards 
 the stern a tunnel-shaped cabin about 6 feet long and 
 3 feet high, made usually of thick matting, but some- 
 times of corrugated iron. The entire family lives in 
 this diminutive cabin, cooking such meals as are 
 necessary on a fire improvised in the bows of the 
 boat. During these visits the children play with the 
 children of the village, the women cook the meals, 
 and the cultivator smokes and gossips through the day 
 or plays cards with his friends. 
 
 But the chief amusement of the cultivator at all 
 seasons of the year is to attend the neighbouring 
 markets on market-days. Probably ten or twelve such 
 markets will be within walking or boating distance of 
 his homestead, all of which he will attend in turn, 
 even in his busiest season finding time to go to two 
 markets a week and during the winter and the rains,
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 47 
 
 when he has nothing to do, going usually to four or 
 five and sometimes to a different market every day. 
 No women go to market in Bengal, yet an infinite 
 deal of chaffering and gossip is needed for the trans- 
 action of a very little business. The cultivator goes to 
 market with his sons soon after his midday meal and 
 will often forgo his midday sleep to attend a distant 
 market ; he leaves again at dusk. He does not 
 ordinarily go to buy anything, but to talk with his 
 friends and neighbours. He often smokes there 
 but never eats or drinks anything. Muhammadans 
 drink no alcohol in any case, and there are no tea- 
 shops or restaurants at any of the markets. Even 
 if he buys some soda-water or lemonade or sweet- 
 meats, of which he and his children are inordinately 
 fond, neither he nor they will consume them at the 
 market. If he buys fruit, mangoes or lichis, one or 
 two may be eaten at the market and he may drink 
 a little water from the stream ; but he finds his amuse- 
 ment in the idle gossip of a few hours amongst the 
 crowd, in noting the price at which country produce 
 sells and in looking at the cattle and live stock brought 
 for sale and the price which is asked for them. On 
 such occasions all disputes between neighbours are 
 canvassed and advice offered, sometimes to conciliate 
 the parties and sometimes to embroil them further. 
 A cultivator may attend a market every day of the 
 week and not spend more than fourpence altogether, 
 but when he has money the Muhammadan at least is 
 a great spendthrift. In the harvest season nine out of 
 every ten cultivators returning from the market will 
 carry an earthen jar full of sweetmeats and at least 
 a pair of the best fish obtainable, whatever may be
 
 48 THE DISTRICT 
 
 their price ; if the large jack-fruit, which is not unlike 
 a melon and a great favourite with the cultivator, is in 
 season, he will carry home two or three also. 
 
 The women-folk in the family have a much less 
 varied time. They have no seasons of work and 
 seasons of idleness, but must work throughout the year 
 at duties which are always the same. They get up 
 before the men, sweep the yard and then the floors of 
 the houses, sprinkling them with water and brushing 
 them with a wet brush. The floors of working-class 
 houses are always kept scrupulously clean and the brass 
 jars and pans are always shining. The women next 
 scrub all the cooking-pots and pans and take the pestle 
 and mortar to husk the rice which will be eaten during 
 the day. They then collect vegetables and other con- 
 diments and prepare the ingredients for the midday 
 meal. After this they go to their pond or the nearest 
 stream for their daily bath, taking with them a jar to 
 bring back such water as may be necessary for cooking. 
 During the rest of the day they are employed in 
 cooking the meals for the family, keeping the houses 
 clean, washing clothes, looking after the young children 
 and tending to the sick. No woman is ever supposed 
 or allowed to take any rest while husband or brother 
 or father is in the house ; or is ever allowed to eat 
 until all the male members of the family, including her 
 little sons, have finished their meal. The women in 
 Eastern Bengal, with the exception of Christian women 
 in the marsh country who are very few in number, do 
 no work of any sort in the field. The only part they 
 take in the agricultural round is to husk the rice both 
 for sale and for consumption, although if jute is grown 
 they are employed during the mornings in the home-
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 49 
 
 stead or very close to it in stripping the fibre after it 
 has been steeped and dried. In this manner they 
 may spend three or four hours every morning for 
 a few weeks. Theirs is a dull life indeed ; the bustle 
 of the market-place is not for them, nor the gentle 
 pleasures of the fisherman. They take no part in 
 the conversation of the men and are not allowed the 
 simplest amusements ; they can only gossip with their 
 women friends, when washing pots or bathing in the 
 pond or public stream. But custom is a kindly auto- 
 crat who softens every hardship. They do not grumble 
 or rebel and are not discontented with their lot ; they 
 do not know and do not want the charms of a fuller or 
 a freer life. 
 
 The children in a Bengali family have a very easy 
 life. The fathers are very fond of their boys and 
 retain that fondness, at least to outward appearance, 
 far longer than an ordinary father of an English 
 family. Amongst the English working-classes there 
 is little obvious affection between father and son after 
 the boy has reached the age of fourteen and become 
 rough ; in an Indian family the bond between father 
 and son remains very close even after the son has 
 married and got a family of his own. At all times the 
 father is never happy unless his boys accompany him 
 to the field or in his fishing. When quite little lads, 
 the boys take out breakfast to the father in the field 
 and prepare tobacco for his occasional pulls at the 
 hookah ; when the morning's work is done they drive 
 the cattle back for him ; in the afternoon they take off 
 the cattle to o-raze and look after them. This is not 
 always an easy task, as an Indian village has no 
 meadow or set pasturage and the cattle pick up what
 
 50 THE DISTRICT 
 
 they can on the grassy balks between the fields and on 
 the roadside. They scatter very much, and the little 
 lad must keep them from feeding on the crops of the 
 neighbours, because it is only too easy, as there are no 
 hedges to the fields, for the cow to stray from the grass 
 into the fields of grain. The boys collect together 
 while cattle-tending in the afternoon and play country 
 games which require a good deal of activity. In many 
 of the larger villages near schools and towns they play 
 football in the evening ; and even cricket, a more ex- 
 pensive game, is not unknown. Before going out in 
 the afternoon with the cattle, they are usually given 
 a simple meal, which amongst the more prosperous 
 may often include ginger-beer or English biscuits, of 
 which they are very fond. As the boys get older they 
 help their fathers in the field and especially in weeding 
 and when they reach the age of fourteen they take their 
 place as a man in the whole of the agricultural round. 
 Only a few of the village lads go to school, and village 
 schools are very primitive institutions. There is no 
 prejudice against learning, but even the most careless 
 observer must notice the tendency of lads who have 
 gone to school to refuse to work in the field and to 
 despise their unlettered fathers. Elementary educa- 
 tion may be a very blessed thing, but it would seem 
 that in an agricultural country it needs to be universal, 
 if it is not to prove a curse. The boys and the 
 girls of a village never mix or play together after 
 the age of six ; but perhaps the most conspicuous 
 feature of a Bengali village to an Englishman is the 
 quietness of the boys, the lack of laughter and of the 
 rough-and-tumble games so common amongst English 
 lads of all classes. This is not due to hard conditions
 
 AND ITS INIIAIUTANTS 5' 
 
 of life, for the children are well fed and well cared for 
 and are ruled with a light hand. It may be an effect 
 of the damp and depressing climate ; but whatever the 
 cause, boisterous merriment and merrymaking is not in 
 Bengali character amongst old or young. On winter 
 evenings it is a custom in some villages for boys to go 
 out in parties round the homesteads and collect coppers 
 by singing ballads to their elders. These ballads are 
 written by rustics in the country dialect and are full 
 of simple repetitions. They are often humorous and 
 usually about local happenings which have struck the 
 imagination of the village. The most popular of these 
 ballads deal with the misfortunes of the great and 
 describe their punishment with realism and relish. 
 The elders like to hear the same ballad again and 
 again ; when it is ended they turn it over and over 
 in their minds and gossip about it endlessly, wisely 
 whispering obvious comments to their beards with 
 many a shake of their heads. In the simple Bengali 
 village this is the only amusement open to the villager 
 in the long evenings. There are no inns or clubs or 
 recreation-rooms, cards and dice are rarely played and 
 other indoor orames are unknown. There are no 
 
 o 
 
 neighbouring towns with theatre or picture-palace 
 and, if there were, there is no railway or other means 
 of conveyance to them. Happily the villagers have 
 not yet learnt to want them and are quite content 
 with the simple songs that the village lads can sing. 
 
 The little girls learn to help very early in the house- 
 work, brushing the floors, cleaning the pots and dishes, 
 carrying water from the nearest river and keeping 
 infants asleep with simple lullabies. They play with 
 dolls, often beautifully made of painted clay, which are 
 
 D 1
 
 53 THE DISTRICT 
 
 cheaply bought at si)ecial fairs in February. They 
 gossip a great deal and play a few simple games, but 
 they are very ignorant and learn very early to be 
 women. The village school is not for them and it will 
 be long before they are allowed into its precincts ; 
 until then the happy days of childhood will be very 
 short and in later life they will find no relief from the 
 dull round of domestic duties. 
 
 It is impossible to give any brief description of the 
 manner of life of the non-cultivating classes. Their 
 occupations differ so widely and there are compara- 
 tively so few families engaged in each occupation that 
 it is not worth while to go into any detail. They 
 work, however, very much harder than the cultivator 
 and with more regular hours ; they have also no 
 seasons of idleness, but work throughout the )'ear. 
 Domestic servants are a hard-worked class, whose 
 work is never done. Weavers — a numerous class — 
 work at home on the hand-loom and not in factories, 
 but they work long hours, beginning early and 
 continuing into the night. The casual labourer in 
 Faridpur, as elsewhere, has idle days in the week. 
 Generally speaking, labourers, weavers and others of 
 the working-classes take their meals and their daily 
 bath, rise in the morning and go to bed at night at 
 the same time as the cultivators. Fishermen — another 
 numerous body — spend most of the day in their boats 
 on the big rivers, but usually eat in their houses ; 
 they very often spend the whole of the night fishing 
 and certainly work harder than any other class of the 
 community. The life of the women is in no way 
 different from that of women of the cultivating classes, 
 except that the wives and daughters of the well-to-do
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS 5^ 
 
 have women servants to assist them or to do their 
 work for them. The few shopkeepers, the landlords 
 and professional men and generally the population of 
 the towns live a more civilized life with a greater 
 variety of food, a greater variety of occupation and 
 a greater variety of amusement. The hours of work 
 of the professional classes are not different from those 
 in Europe. The only feature of life amongst the pro- 
 fessional classes which is worthy of comment is a result 
 of the dependence of women upon the man. Amongst 
 these classes, known in Bengal by the generic term of 
 bhadralok, the bread-winner of the family is usually 
 employed in one of the towns or away from his village ; 
 but instead of taking his family to live with him, he 
 leaves them at home, not alone however, as he always 
 leaves an adult male member of the family as guardian 
 over them. These guardians have no serious occupa- 
 tion. Landowners also are accustomed to spend an 
 idle life in their village homes, not only the father 
 but all the sons togrether. The result is that idle 
 men are found in many villages who have no possible 
 means of spending their days profitably and who not 
 unnaturally devote themselves to intrigue or to foment- 
 ing strife between their neighbours ; wherever villagers 
 quarrel or are at loggerheads with their neighbours 
 there is usually some idle bhadralok who acts as the 
 agent provocateur. Much of the sin and the crime in 
 the villages is to be laid at their doors. 
 
 It may be added that all boys of the Hindu 're- 
 spectable ' classes go to school from the age of six to 
 the age of sixteen at least and many of them stay 
 much lonorer ; indeed, in the hio-hest forms of most 
 schools some of the boys are really men with beards,
 
 54 THE DISTRICT AND ITS INHABITANTS 
 
 a wife and a growing family. Hindu and Muham- 
 madan traders also send their sons to school but 
 usually take them away at the age of fourteen. 
 Muhammadans of the landowner and ' respectable ' 
 classes have only recently begun to send their boys to 
 school, and in many of such families the sons still lead 
 a lazy life and create much bad blood and mischief 
 Labourers and fishermen rarely send their boys to 
 school, weavers more often, while the Hindu shop- 
 keeper, goldsmith or silversmith usually teaches his 
 boys at home to read, write and keep accounts.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 It will be convenient to examine the expenditure 
 of an average family before recording the statistics 
 of its income. The population of Faridpur, so far 
 as it came under review in the course of our investi- 
 gations, was found to consist to the extent of 77 per 
 cent, of peasants and other agriculturalists and to the 
 extent of only 23 per cent, of those who were not 
 engaged in the cultivation of the soil. In the matter 
 of expenditure, or what may be better described as 
 the family budget, the distinction between these two 
 classes is vital. The peasant grows his own food and 
 is for the most part able to feed himself and his family ; 
 moreover, in many other ways he obtains from his sur- 
 plus land, his trees, or his live stock materials which are 
 useful to him and save expenditure. The non-agricul- 
 turalist on the other hand buys everything. As a 
 result — and this is a truism thoroughly understood in 
 every agricultural country — the peasant is always better 
 fed than the non-agriculturalist who has nominally the 
 same income. In Faridpur the two classes were kept 
 rigidly apart in our investigations ; all incomes and all 
 calculations of the domestic budget of the peasant 
 were expressed partly in cash and partly in crops as 
 a basis of estimation, while those of the non-agricul- 
 turalist were expressed wholly in cash. 
 
 To deal with the agricultural population first, normal 
 domestic budo^ets were collected from a laroe number
 
 56 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 of budgets drawn up widi great care by every officer 
 independently after personal enquiry. The officer was 
 directed to examine the condition of the famihes in his 
 village and to select several examples of families who 
 were in the most comfortable circumstances and several 
 examples of families who were in the most indigent 
 circumstances. He was then directed to enquire of 
 the peasant the amount which the family consumed of 
 the different food-stuffs which were ©rown on its fields. 
 The daily consumption also of rice, salt, and oil by 
 the families was watched where this was possible, and 
 an average daily rate of consumption per head was 
 calculated. The peasant was closel)' questioned as to 
 the kind, quantity and price of all food and of all 
 other necessaries which he bought in a month or a 
 year, his statements being tested by the sum which 
 he had actually spent in the previous year. Generally 
 speaking, averages obtained over so large a number 
 of families selected by different enquirers in many 
 different centres must give very fair results. Any one 
 who has conducted such enquiries will know what pit- 
 falls are in the way. Personal idiosyncrasy makes 
 havoc of the most careful attempts at uniformity and 
 in the spending of money moralists and economists 
 alike deplore the latitude allowed to personal idio- 
 syncrasy. In some items there was in the nature of 
 the case considerable difficulty in striking an average 
 of expenditure ; thus, house repairs were an item which 
 had to be taken into account, but as they were not 
 necessary each year an estimate had to be made on 
 the basis of spreading the cost of the occasional re- 
 pairs over the number of years during which the 
 repairs would last. Medical expenses were an item
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 57 
 
 even more difficult to estimate, and here the estima- 
 tion was done on an average taken direct from the 
 budgets of the past year. In many parts of the country 
 where large marshes or countless streams are found, 
 boats take the place of cattle for the conveyance of 
 produce ; in the standard budgets the initial cost of 
 such boats was spread over their probable period 
 of employment. In a similar way the cost of cattle 
 was spread over their average duration of life. Rent, 
 which otherwise might have been a great difficulty, 
 was obtained with absolute accuracy from the Record 
 of Rights. It should be added that luxuries were not 
 included in these domestic budgets. By this means 
 jewellery was entirely eliminated. It may reasonably 
 be urged that jewellery of some kind is a necessity and 
 not a luxury to women, but it must be clear that the 
 amount expended on it, being entirely a matter of 
 personal taste or caprice, cannot possibly be estimated 
 in a calculation of this kind. In addition there is the 
 fact that almost every cultivator deposits his savings 
 with his wife in the form of jewellery, so that expendi- 
 ture on jewellery is less a part of his annual budget 
 than a measure of his annual profit. Entertainment, 
 although it might be accounted a luxury in the con- 
 ditions of Europe, could not be so regarded in Bengal. 
 In the house of a Hindu certain ceremonies and enter- 
 tainments are obligatory on such domestic occasions as 
 births, marriages, and deaths ; and although not by 
 religion obligatory in the same way upon Muham- 
 madans, yet socially it is practically impossible for a 
 Muhammadan to bury a member of his family without 
 some expense or to marry a child without considerable 
 expense. Some allowance for entertainment was clearly
 
 58 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 necessary in any true budget, but again taste and 
 caprice enter so largely into the amounts spent by 
 different families that an average became extremely 
 difficult to estimate. 
 
 Very great labour was devoted to the preparation of 
 domestic budgets by over two hundred officers who 
 made a close scrutiny of the habits and expenditure 
 of more than two thousand families for the purpose. 
 It was found that expenditure tended to amount in 
 all families in a similar degree of prosperity to 
 identical totals, thereby making it possible to draw 
 up model budgets with considerable accuracy. These 
 model budgets were of great value in the tabulation 
 of the resources of the agriculturalists, as they per- 
 mitted the cash equivalent of all food grown on the 
 family fields and consumed by the family to be calcu- 
 lated, and thereby the annual income of each agri- 
 cultural family to be expressed in cash. It would have 
 been impossible to estimate the cash value of crops 
 retained for consumption by each individual agri- 
 cultural family, and it was not attempted. Instead, 
 all agricultural families were classified according to 
 their degrees of prosperity and the model budgets used 
 to assess the cash value of the food which] the family 
 would require to justify thejclassification. 
 
 Perhaps the most convenient method of illustrating 
 the standards which were adopted for the classification 
 of families will be to examine in detail the amounts 
 which were finally adopted as equivalent to the ex- 
 penditure of an ordinary family living in comfort and 
 of an ordinary family living in indigence or just above 
 the margin of starvation. In both cases the basis of 
 the calculation was a family of five, consisting of two
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 59 
 
 adult males, one adult female, one male and one female 
 child. In the classification, as will be explained later, 
 there w ere two more classes, ' below comfort ' and 
 ' above indigence ', which were intermediate between 
 the two selected for examination ; but it is unnecessary 
 to reproduce here the details of the normal budgets of 
 these classes, as they were naturally between the two 
 extremes. 
 
 
 Amount spent 
 
 Amount 
 
 spent 
 
 Item of 
 
 annually by 
 
 annually by 
 
 Expenditure. 
 
 a fam 
 
 ly in 
 
 a family in 
 
 
 com 
 
 fort. 
 
 extreme inc 
 
 igence 
 
 Food : 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Rice 
 
 8 o 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Salt 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Oil. 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Spices 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 Fish 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 Vegetables 
 
 ID 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Milk and Butter i^i^hi) 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Other necessaries : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Kerosene oil . 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 Tobacco and Molasses 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 Betel Nut 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 Clothes . . . . 
 
 ' ^3 
 
 4 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 Household utensils . 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 Petty house-repairs . 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Furniture 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Miscellaneous : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rent 
 
 f 13 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Local taxation 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 Medical treatment . 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Purchase of cattle . 
 
 10 
 
 8 
 
 (hire) 2 
 
 
 
 Purchase of boat 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 
 - 
 
 Thorough house-repairs 
 
 10 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 Domestic festivals and 
 
 
 
 
 
 entertainments 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 The total is ^3 6s. Sc/. (or fifty rupees) per head in 
 families in comfort and £1 6s. 8c/. (or twenty rupees) 
 per head in families in indigence. It will be observed
 
 6o THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 that the proportion of the total budget spent upon food 
 by famihes in comfort is 58 per cent, and by fainihes 
 in indigence 69 per cent. 
 
 It has already been mentioned that a cidtivator 
 obtains many things from his land and live stock 
 which the non-cultivator has to buy. As a result he 
 gets more of all these things for the same price than 
 the non-cultivator. This is obviously true of the food 
 which he grows on his own land. When he gets in 
 his harvest he puts aside the. whole amount of the 
 crop which is required for the family subsistence for 
 a whole year, making a generous estimate of the 
 quantity required, and he does not sell the surplus 
 immediately but only as he requires money for other 
 purchases. In a normal year, when the crop is good, 
 he and his family will always fare generously, eating 
 as much as each wants. After a poor harvest he 
 does not usually stint himself in the matter of food 
 until late in the year, when the food supply is visibly 
 beginning to run out. It will be understood that rice 
 forms the staple article of diet and that except on 
 rare occasions the only ' flesh ' which the ordinary 
 cultivator eats is fish. He may and Muhammadans 
 usually do keep a supply of live stock, fowls, ducks 
 and two or three goats, but he rarely eats them and 
 he never kills his cattle for the table. In addition to 
 rice, vegetables, milk, oil, ghi (the native butter) and 
 pulses form part of the daily diet. The cash equivalent 
 of what the family eats of the minor articles of diet in 
 a year has been taken at the sum which a non-culti- 
 vator would pay in buying them ; although a cultivator 
 would obtain them at cost price and therefore at some- 
 what less, yet he will compensate for this in consuming
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 61 
 
 more. The cost of rice for ' comfort ' is reckoned 
 upon a consumption of one maund (82 lb.) of un- 
 husked rice per head per month, at a price of 2s. 8d. 
 (two rupees) per maund, which was the average price 
 then ruling' in the local markets. This is really more 
 than the average individual will consume. The Famine 
 Commission, in considering the daily subsistence, took 
 three-quarters of a ser (if lb.) per head of husked rice 
 as the amount required to keep a family of the culti- 
 vating classes physically fit. One maund of unhusked 
 rice is equivalent to 2 7|-sers of husked rice as estimated 
 by the cultivators themselves and is therefore about 
 20 per cent, more than the standard which the Famine 
 Commission adopted. Very careful enquiries go to 
 show that while adult males will eat one ser of husked 
 rice a day, adult females will eat less than half a ser 
 and small children about half a ser. A prosperous 
 family of five would therefore in all probability eat 
 considerably less than the five maunds per month which 
 is adopted in the scale. 
 
 What has already been written will show that 
 throughout the district fish is consumed by all classes 
 every day. But the fish is generally caught by the 
 consumer and so infrequently bought that ruling prices 
 could not be discovered in the markets. This was so 
 great a difficulty in preparing budgets expressed in 
 money that it was thought advisable to eliminate 
 from them all fish caught by the family and to 
 include only such fish as is purchased. It will be 
 understood that this is a very small proportion of the 
 whole supply. It is possible for any cultivator in 
 any part of the district, except at the height of 
 the dry weather in the east and more particularly
 
 62 THE DOMESTIC 15UDGET 
 
 the north-east, to take a fishing-rod, walk perhaps 
 a mile to the nearest stream and catch fish for the 
 consumption of his family. As a result, fish is normally 
 a daily article of diet in every family, but in addition 
 to the fish which each catches for his own consump- 
 tion it is common for a certain amount to be bought, 
 either when the family has been otherwise employed 
 and has had no time for fishing or when fish of a better 
 quality is desired. As may be imagined, fish is very 
 cheap in all the markets, indeed a halfpenny will 
 purchase sufficient for a meal for a whole family. The 
 sum included in the budget represents approximately 
 the quantity which an average family purchases in 
 a year. Probably this differs in different parts of the 
 district, according as water remains in the rivers for 
 all or only part of the year, but in practice in those 
 parts in which water disappears from the stream-beds 
 fish is eaten in less quantity, as the means of internal 
 communication are not sufficient to transport it from 
 a locality where water remains to a locality where the 
 streams have dried up. 
 
 To Europeans the sum of money spent on milk may 
 appear very small. The Bengali does not drink milk 
 in any large quantity and the cultivator makes the 
 amount which is supplied by his cattle sufficient for 
 his needs. It is only near towns that anybody keeps 
 milch kine. Tobacco is usually grown by the cultivator 
 on the land near his homestead, but in recent times 
 it has become the custom to purchase cigarettes. The 
 women and children of cultivators smoke as well as 
 the men, but this practice is not universal, as in some 
 parts of the district only the male adult smokes. The 
 amount allowed is what a family appears to spend in
 
 THE DOMESTIC liUDGET 63 
 
 a year when no tobacco is grown. The expenditure 
 on household utensils is merely the renewal of cheap 
 earthenware jars and pots as they break. Under the 
 head of petty house-repairs, the value of the materials 
 only is allowed for, as the labour is always supplied by 
 the members of the family. In thorough house-repairs 
 the labour is also supplied almost exclusively by the 
 family, although occasionally expert thatchers are em- 
 ployed. As the houses are usually walled with mat, 
 roofed with thatch and floored with dry mud, the 
 repair of houses by the family involves no great diffi- 
 culty and no very heavy labour. With the exception 
 of wooden beams, the cultivator usually obtains all the 
 material for the repair of his house from his own land 
 and garden. It was necessary, however, to value this 
 material and the sum mentioned in the scale is that 
 which a non-cultivator would .ordinarily pay for raw 
 materials for the repair of a similar house. The cost 
 of cattle has been calculated on the assumption that 
 one plough and two plough-cattle will meet the wants 
 of a family of five. As the effective life of the cattle 
 is ten years and the cost of each about forty rupees, 
 this estimate is equivalent to an annual charge of 
 eight rupees (los. Sd.). Cattle are not fed with oil- 
 cake, but are allowed to graze on the somewhat scanty 
 grass, on catch-crops occasionally grown in the cold 
 weather and on the straw of the rice-crop. No money 
 is actually spent upon their up-keep, nor is a valuation 
 necessary as the straw has no selling value except in 
 the near neighbourhood of the few towns. Nearly 
 every family living in comfort possesses a small boat, 
 usually a dinghy, which is somewhat like a large dug- 
 out and somewhat like a canoe. It is usually about
 
 64 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 15 feet long and between 2 and 3 feet in beam, costs 
 twenty rupees, i.e. £\ 6s. 8c/., and has a life of twenty 
 years. 
 
 The estimate for domestic festivals and entertain- 
 ment is very rough and is based on the assumption 
 that the lifetime of a generation is thirty years, during 
 which there will be ^ne birth, one marriage and one 
 death per head of population. In a family of five there 
 will be five of each such events, estimated to cost 
 5 rupees for a birth, 25 rupees for a death and 42 rupees 
 for a marriage, or a total of 72 rupees for each mem- 
 ber, which must be spread over thirty }ears and is so 
 equivalent to an average charge of twelve rupees per 
 year, the remainder of the sum set down in the table 
 being a small allowance to cover the cost of the 
 minimum amount of hospitality. It must be remem- 
 bered that an Indian village affords no means of 
 spending money on amusements. At the most an 
 occasional strolling band of players may with luck 
 invade the neighbourhood of the village for a week 
 in every other year. It is impossible to take friends 
 or family to the theatre or the picture-palace or out to 
 tea because in the whole district there are no theatres, 
 picture-palaces, or tea-shops. It is impossible for the 
 peasant even to ' treat ' his friend, as there are no inns 
 or public-houses at which liquor can be purchased and 
 the convivial habits of Europe are no part of the social 
 life of the East. Friendliness, when shown at all, is 
 shown by inviting a man to have a pull at the family 
 hookah, which costs the host nothing. Members of the 
 family and other friends will occasionally visit a home- 
 stead and be entertained, but an entertainment of this 
 simple kind is not a recognized method of social inter-
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 6$ 
 
 course in a Bengal village. When a cultivator wishes 
 to entertain his friends and has the means, he either 
 waits for an occasion such as a domestic event in his 
 family or else he entertains magnificently, asking all 
 his neighbours without exception, feeding them sump- 
 tuously and spending several times more than he can 
 conveniently afford. 
 
 Most of these remarks naturally refer to those 
 families who live in comfortable circumstances. The 
 indigent never entertain except when they are com- 
 pelled by the rigid social code which ordains this 
 method of advertising domestic events in the family. 
 In other respects the difference between the standard 
 of living of an indigent and a prosperous cultivator lies 
 in a reduction in the amount expended on each item 
 of the budget and not in the cutting out of any item 
 altogether. Except in the marshes, the poorer families 
 do not keep a boat, and they save largely in all the 
 smaller items of expenditure, in their purchase of cattle 
 and clothes and in the cost of house repairs. In the 
 important matter of the consumption of rice the scale 
 which was adopted assumed that an indigent family 
 eats only half as much as a prosperous family. An 
 adult male will starve if his daily allowance of rice 
 falls below half a ser. It was found after careful 
 examination and enquiry that the food-scale in this 
 standard really provides sufficient margin to prevent 
 starvation, more especially when it is remembered 
 that the poorest can catch fish as easily as the com- 
 fortable. In other words a cultivator possessing a 
 realized income of the amount indicated will be able 
 to support his family without resort to begging. They 
 will be ill clothed and ill housed, but they will not
 
 66 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 be underfed ; that is to say, although they will not 
 receive sufficient nourishment to maintain their bodies 
 at the greatest strength of which they are capable, yet 
 the nourishment will be sufficient to enable them to 
 continue at work and to perform their ordinary duties. 
 In practice there is no such thing as starvation for 
 a cultivator in the Bengal Delta, because if a man 
 does not earn enough to buy his food, he can always 
 beg it. The agricultural peasant is very generous 
 and will always give the poor a full meal. What may 
 be described as the cultivator's margin of starvation is 
 therefore such an income as will just lift him above 
 the necessity of begging for his food and no more, 
 but in clothes and housing will maintain him in a very 
 miserable manner. In a Bengal village the destitute 
 never look starved, although they may have no cattle, 
 their houses may be ramshackle and broken-down, 
 their clothes thin and raofSfed. On this account it is 
 impossible to attempt any comparison with the desti- 
 tute in the western world. In any agricultural com- 
 munity utter destitution is unknown ; but in Bengal the 
 misery of comparative destitution is mitigated by a 
 mild climate and by social custom which enjoins none 
 but the simplest clothing. With few exceptions, those 
 families which will be found in chronic need in any 
 Eastern Bengal village will on enquiry prove to be 
 either widows left with a family of young children or 
 old people who are past work and who have no rela- 
 tives to support them. At certain seasons of the year 
 a few other families may lack a full meal and may 
 even resort to begging for it, but once the harvest is 
 gathered they live again, eating as well as their more 
 prosperous brethren and showing their poverty only 
 in the quality of their houses and their clothes.
 
 THE DOMI^STIC BUDGET 67 
 
 The domestic budget of a non-cultivator of the 
 working-classes was found to be little different from 
 that of a cultivator. It includes no more items and 
 for all practical purposes does not vary greatly in the 
 amount expended on each item. In past centuries, 
 as is well known, Indian society was divided into 
 functional groups. Each village was industrially self- 
 sufficient, the industrial work beins^ allotted to certain 
 families, each family performing one task and one 
 task only and no outsider being allowed to compete. 
 But the caste system was never adopted by the 
 Muhammadan and lost its hold upon converts from 
 Hinduism, so that it has been gradually breaking down 
 in Bengal for more than two centuries. In Faridpur 
 the population is two-thirds Muhammadan and only 
 one-third Hindu; it is not therefore to be expected 
 that functional groups should play any important part 
 in industry. The non-agricultural community is not in 
 any case of great importance, as it amounts to only 
 23 per cent, of the population, of which as much as 
 10 per cent, is employed in service or supported by the 
 rent of land which it owns, 6 per cent, is engaged in 
 trade and only 8 per cent, is employed in industry. Of 
 this 8 per cent, only 3 per cent, could by any stretch 
 of the imagination be called skilled labour, the 
 remainder consisting of coolies employed to some 
 extent on roads and earthwork, but chiefly as porters in 
 the markets, towns, steamer and railway stations. In 
 other words, Faridpur is not only preponderantly but 
 exclusively an agricultural district, that part of the 
 population which is not engaged in the production of 
 crops being almost exclusively engaged in services of 
 different kinds to the agricultural community. 
 
 E 3
 
 68 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 As might be expected in such circumstances most 
 of the non-cultivators are the brothers, sons, and 
 grandsons of cultivators and exhibit no differences 
 from them in domestic customs or their standard of 
 living. There are only two industries of any impor- 
 tance in which the workers have been for several 
 generations engaged in the same occupation and might 
 therefore be expected to have a different standard. 
 These industries are fishing and weaving, both of which 
 are hereditary amongst Muhammadans as amongst 
 Hindus, probably because the forefathers of the Muham- 
 madans were converts from Hinduism. However, in 
 neither industry is the number of those engaged 
 sufficient to justify any separate treatment of their 
 standards of living. Generally speaking, it may be 
 said that weavers are thrifty folk and reach the same 
 standard of comfort as a cultivator at considerably less 
 than the same expense. The fishermen are those who 
 fish in the Ganges for the market and are a very rough 
 class, being comprehensively described in the words used 
 by the Spanish Ambassador of the English peasantry 
 in the reign of Henry VHI : ' They live like pigs, but 
 they fare as well as the King.' The homestead of the 
 fisherman is usually a miserable affair and ill furnished, 
 his clothing is adequate but coarse, his food is always 
 sufficient. A good deal of the unskilled labour is 
 imported from neighbouring districts and does not need 
 description, as it only stays in the district for short 
 periods of the year and spends most of its time at home. 
 The rest of the non-cultivating classes who work with 
 their hands live in every respect at the same standard 
 and in the same way as the cultivators from whom they 
 sprang. This applies also to Muhammadan traders,
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 69 
 
 to most of the smaller Muhammadaii landowners and 
 to Muhammadan clerks who are generally sons of the 
 most prosperous cultivators and whose habits and 
 standard of living conform in all respects to those of 
 their fathers. 
 
 Amongst the Hindus, however, landowners, clerks, 
 professional men such as doctors, lawyers and priests, 
 form a class apart. They are of the three higher 
 castes in the Hindu caste system and have for centuries 
 lived in a different manner from the ordinary popula- 
 tion. They have more wants and more ways of 
 spending their money ; they eat less but better food 
 with greater variety ; their houses are built on a different 
 plan and are better furnished ; their clothes although 
 the same in cut display more variety in quality and 
 colour. A budpfet for such classes will show crreat 
 differences from the budo^et of the workinof classes in 
 the proportionate amounts spent upon food, furniture, 
 medical treatment and clothes. Muhammadan land- 
 owners, lawyers, doctors, and the like of good family 
 will show a similar but not equal divergence in the 
 proportion of their expenditure devoted to particular 
 items. Another class which has a standard of living 
 of its own, different on the one hand from that of the 
 working classes and on the other hand from that of 
 the 'respectable' classes, is the Hindu shopkeepers, 
 who are often also workers in metals and the like. 
 Their families tend to be numerous, they keep several 
 servants, their houses are large, well built and well 
 furnished, they expend a certain amount upon the 
 education of their children and much larger sums than 
 the working classes upon domestic events. 
 
 These classes were never sufficiently numerous to
 
 70 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 make it worth while to draw up separate budgets, more 
 especially as the variations in income within the classes 
 were very great and the scale of expenditure was 
 different near towns and in the interior. Some attempt 
 was made to deal exhaustively with the ' respectable ' 
 classes, but it was not very successful. The great 
 difficulty was the joint-family system, in which parents 
 live with all their sons and sons' children and often 
 with nephews and cousins. Thus there were families 
 forty strong, twenty strong and five strong, and the task 
 of reducing such divergencies to a common level could 
 only be attempted by an officer who knew the whole 
 district and had the figures of all such families at his 
 elbow. 
 
 For comparison with the budgets of the cultivators 
 I append domestic budgets drawn up for an ordinary 
 non-agricultural family of the working class. A family 
 of the same size is adopted and the average income 
 per head works out at the same figure. These budgets 
 must, however, only be taken as rough guides. It is 
 really impossible to average the expenditure of fisher- 
 men, weavers, coolies and small traders ; but the 
 number of each group was so small in comparison 
 with the total population of the district that it did not 
 seem worth while to select sufficient families from each 
 to enable budgets to be drawn up for each separately. 
 In comparison with cultivators a larger proportion of 
 the expenditure is upon food ; but it is probable that 
 this does not represent greater quantity or better 
 quality. The bulk of the food is bought, but non- 
 cultivators fish as cultivators do, although they probably 
 buy more fish in the year than the cultivator. Some 
 rent land and grow food crops upon them b)' hiring 
 
 H
 
 THE DOMESTIC BUDGET 
 
 71 
 
 labour; most grow tobacco and vegetables on home- 
 stead lands, many keep a cow to give them milk and 
 butter and grow thatching grass and a bamboo clump 
 in their gardens to supply materials for the repair of 
 
 their huts. The budgets 
 
 are as folio 
 
 ivs : 
 
 
 
 Amount spent 
 
 Amount 
 
 spent 
 
 Item of 
 
 annually by 
 
 annually by 
 
 Expenditure. 
 
 a 
 
 fam 
 
 ily in 
 
 a family in 
 
 
 
 3om 
 
 fort. 
 
 extreme in( 
 
 iigence 
 
 Food : 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Rice .... 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Salt .... 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Oil 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Spices .... 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Fish .... 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Pulses .... 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Vegetables 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Milk and ghi (butter) 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Other necessaries : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Betel nut ... 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 Kerosene oil . 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 
 6 
 
 Tobacco and molasses 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 Clothes .... 
 
 I 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 Household utensils . 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Annual petty house repairs 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 Rent .... 
 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Local taxation 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Medical expenses 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Furniture 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 -Thorough house repairs . 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 Domestic festivals and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 entertainment 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 5 
 

 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 INCOME AND ECONOMIC CONDITION OE THE 
 PEOPLE AS REVEALED BY THE STATISTICS 
 
 I HAVE gone into the expenditure of an average 
 family in this detail because a thorough understanding 
 of the social habits and method of life of the people is 
 essential before the statistics and the classifications 
 which were the result of the economic investigations 
 made in Faridpur can be understood. The object of 
 these investigations was first to find out the condition 
 of the family by examining the condition of the home- 
 stead and its inmates and then to determine the 
 income of the family partly by cross-examination of the 
 adults and partly by computation from the amount of 
 land which each cultivator's family possessed and the 
 selling value of the crop which it could produce. The 
 investigation was carried out by men (Bengalis who 
 were mostly university graduates) who had already 
 been several months in the locality, had made a survey 
 field by field of the village and had prepared a paper 
 describing the fields, soil, area, rent and rights for every 
 tenancy belonging to every cultivator. They therefore 
 knew much about the productive capacity of the soil 
 and much about the habits of the villagers. They 
 were directed to pay more attention to what they saw 
 than to what they heard, and only after they had seen 
 the condition of the family by a visit to its homestead 
 to enquire into its resources, to tabulate its income 
 and to enter its classification.
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 73 
 
 In classification four standards were adopted : ' com- 
 fort ', which implied a condition in which the material 
 necessities of life could be fully satisfied ; ' indigence ', 
 which implied a condition in which the family had just 
 sufficient to keep itself alive and no more ; and two 
 classes intermediate between these extremes, one 
 labelled * below comfort ', in which the income and 
 material conditions approximated more nearly to those 
 of families livingr in comfort than to those of families 
 living in indigence, and the other labelled * above 
 indigence ', in which the income and material con- 
 ditions approximated more nearly to those of indigent 
 families. The officers were expressly told that ' where 
 they find an agricultural family well-fed, well-housed 
 and well-clothed, this is comfort ; the material necessi- 
 ties are fully satisfied : where they find a family thin 
 and ill-developed, their garments old and worn, their 
 huts ill-thatched and tumbled-down, this is starvation. 
 In most cases the evidence of the eye is decisive, 
 but there are those of a miser's nature who live 
 poorly but possess much, and others of a spendthrift 
 nature who live well but end in ruin. The local 
 knowledge of the officer is more than ample to warn 
 him of such cases.' After inspection of the home- 
 stead and its inmates and after detailed cross-examina- 
 tion, the officers filled up a form, which was designed 
 to express in money the income which the family 
 obtained from every source, including for example 
 how much a cultivator's family derived not only from 
 the sale of crops, but from the sale of dairy produce, 
 bye-products, fruit and timber. 
 
 In estimating the income of cultivators only what 
 they actually sold or earned was brought into the
 
 74 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 account, such of their crops as they retained for con- 
 sumption in the family being ignored. The classifi- 
 cation of the family and the enumeration of its members, 
 adults and children, male and female, would enable 
 a calculation to be made subsequently of the quantity 
 which was necessary for the subsistence of the family 
 at the standard at which it was living and the cash 
 value of that quantity at current prices. Most cultiva- 
 tors in Faridpur have some subsidiary occupation. The 
 amount which they earn by these occupations was also 
 shown in different columns of the form. There was 
 little difficulty in obtaining data as to the incomes of 
 cultivators and little difficulty in filling up the form with 
 a considerable degree of accuracy. The knowledge 
 which the officer had acquired in his long stay in the 
 village, the survey which he had made of all the land 
 in the villao^e and the information which was at his 
 disposal as to the yield of the different crops enabled 
 him to check very completely the statements of the 
 cultivator. It was only in the columns which dealt with 
 the sale of dairy produce, bye-products, fruit and so 
 forth that any real difficulty was experienced. The 
 cultivator had never kept account of these things, and 
 his habit is to sell small quantities at a time. It was 
 therefore exceedingly difficult to estimate his total sales 
 in a year. The officer usually solved this difficulty by 
 making no entry in the column at all, so that for the 
 district as a whole the total income derived from these 
 sources was greatly under-estimated. But the amount 
 so obtained was so small a proportion of the total 
 income of each family that this deficiency in the statistics 
 had little ill effect upon the general average of accuracy. 
 There was also a column for indebtedness. The figure
 
 FXONOMIC CONDITION 75 
 
 in this column was obtained from the statements of the 
 cuhivators, supported as far as possible by an examina- 
 tion of the bonds which they had executed. The whole 
 question of indebtedness is dealt with in a separate 
 chapter, but the entry was of some value in the task of 
 classification and of assessing the family income. On 
 the one hand a family which was heavily in debt could 
 not be classified accurately as living in the standard of 
 comfort, although to all outward appearance it might 
 seem to be of that standard ; on the other hand in 
 checkinof the statements of the cultivator as to his 
 income the knowled^^e of a laro^e debt was of some 
 assistance in detectinof exaesferations. These were less 
 infrequent than might be expected. The ordinary 
 man, whether in India or in any other country, is 
 not in the habit of over-estimating his Income, more 
 especially when he is talking to a Government official ; 
 there are obvious risks of taxation which inculcate the 
 virtue of discretion. But it was found that the spendthrift 
 in Bengal had lost his caution as much in this respect 
 as in the consumption of his resources. It was rather 
 a matter of pride with him to exaggerate his income 
 and also to exaoorerate his debts, and whenever the debt 
 was said to be large the officers soon learnt to examine 
 the statements of the spendthrift with great care. 
 
 In the assessment of non-cultivators the whole income 
 of the family was expressed in money. Most ot them 
 also receive it in money, but servants, temporary 
 labourers (such as carters), boatmen and the like, are 
 often paid partly in food or in kind. In such cases the 
 produce, whether food, grain or fibre, was converted 
 into its money equivalent before being entered into 
 the form. It is probable that the statistics of income
 
 76 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 of the non-agricultural classes are less accurate than 
 the statistics of income of the agricultural classes. This 
 is especially likely in small towns or populous villages 
 in which the non-agricultural element was large. All 
 except the fishermen and the unskilled labourers were 
 very cautious in their statements and very prone to 
 minimize their profits or earnings. The officer, on the 
 other hand, had no means except the evidence of his 
 eye to check the statements, as his duties brought him 
 into touch exclusively with the classes who possess land 
 and he did not see as much of the non-agricultural 
 classes or hear as much about them. In dealing with 
 the respectable classes [bhadi'alok), these disadvantages 
 were perhaps outweighed by the fact that the officer 
 was of the same class himself and naturally knew more 
 about their sources of income and scale of expenditure 
 than about those of the lower classes. He learnt 
 a good deal also in social intercourse with these 
 families. In assessing the incomes of traders, shop- 
 keepers and weavers it is probable that his estimates 
 are least accurate. Here he had only the evidence of 
 his eyes as a check upon the statement of the persons 
 concerned, while it is a commonplace in India that men 
 of these classes are most cautious in giving information. 
 There is however one satisfactory feature in this lack 
 of accuracy — the error is on the side of an under-state- 
 ment and not of an over-statement. It is certain that 
 the income of these classes is greater than the amount 
 shown in the statistics, but this error would not 
 necessarily enter into the classification which was 
 made, as always, preponderantly upon the evidence 
 afforded by the eyes. 
 
 A word should be added to explain the treatment in
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 77 
 
 these statistics of families supported by absentees. 
 This very characteristic feature of Bengal life is ex- 
 tremely common amongst the respectable classes, not 
 unknown amongst the cultivators and frequent amongst 
 non-cultivators of the working classes. The father of 
 a family will go into service elsewhere or pursue the 
 trade of boatman, shopkeeper or fisherman, remaining 
 away from his home for long periods of time, during 
 which he will send monthly remittances for the support 
 of his family. He may remain for years in another 
 district, in a distant town or even in a neighbouring 
 town, but he will not set up house there and bring his 
 family to live with him. Throughout the whole period 
 the family will live in the old homestead in the village, 
 and he will see them only for a few days in the year 
 when he obtains a holiday. This custom is prevalent 
 amongst all classes of the community, but it has the 
 greatest vogue amongst the respectable classes. Clerks, 
 lawyers and Government officials, who spend their 
 lives in the head-quarters town, very rarely bring their 
 wives and still more rarely their children to the town 
 to live with them. This custom is no doubt partly due 
 to the difficulties and expense of conveyance, especially 
 of women who have never travelled, but among the 
 ' respectable ' classes the joint-family system must be 
 reckoned to be the main reason. The individual may 
 reside elsewhere, but the wife and children must be left 
 in their real home, the bosom of the joint-family. In 
 modern times the joint-family of the old pattern has 
 shown a tendency to break up, but in the lifetime of 
 the father the old home is usually still the abode of the 
 sons and their families, although the father himself 
 may be a lawyer in the head-quarters town, living alone
 
 78 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 in lodgings and sending the bulk of his earnings to 
 support the family, while some of the sons may also be 
 clerks or Government officials in distant or neighbour- 
 inof towns. All these sons will leave their families in 
 the old home under the care of their own mother and 
 contribute with the bulk of their earnings to the support 
 of the joint-family. It is by no means uncommon to 
 find such a family with ten or more adult women and 
 many children of different degrees of kinship under the 
 care of a single man, probably one out of many sons, 
 who has no other business in life than their manage- 
 ment and no visible income of his own. The forms 
 were so arranged as to include such cases, the family 
 in the village being treated for purposes of classification 
 as in possession of the income which they actually 
 enjoyed, although it was earned by absent members of 
 the family. In the town the income of the absent 
 member was taken as the amount which he retained 
 for his own support, and the bulk which he sent 
 home to his family was excluded from consideration. 
 
 The total population which was brought under eco- 
 nomic review proved to be 1,861,183, included in 
 342,108 separate families. Of this population 1,429,630 
 (or 77 per cent.) were agricultural, and the remainder (or 
 23 per cent.) non-agricultural. The average agricultural 
 family was somewhat larger than the non-agricultural. 
 Of cultivators 256,681 families were enumerated, each 
 on the average containing 5*6 persons, while of non- 
 agriculturalists 85,427 families were enumerated, each 
 containing five persons. In the total there were 103 
 males to every 100 females, and 60 per cent, of the 
 population was classified as adult. The line of division 
 between adults and children was, however, taken as
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 79 
 
 fifteen years, as a child arrives at maturity much sooner 
 in the East than in the West and is often married and 
 responsible for a family at that age besides undertaking 
 the full work of a man or woman. The number of 
 children, as would appear from a comparison with the 
 census figures, is too small. This discrepancy is no doubt 
 due to the fact that many young girls were entered as 
 women or omitted altogether. They are kept in the 
 house and not allowed to come out before strangers. 
 The officers therefore could not see them, and as the 
 officers were young men any questions on the subject 
 would have been received with suspicion. 
 
 The census of 191 1, which was taken three years 
 after this economic investigation, enumerated a popula- 
 tion of 2,122,000 in Faridpur. This number included 
 the persons, mostly foreigners, living in boats in the 
 big rivers on the day of the census, who were not 
 included in our investigations, as well as the natural 
 increase in the population in three years. Making 
 allowance for these additions, it appears that in our 
 investigations less that one person in ten was om.itted. 
 Omissions were to be expected in such enquiries ; but 
 the fewness of the omissions shows that the investigation 
 for all practical purposes covered the entire district. 
 
 The total annual income of the agricultural popula- 
 tion was ascertained to be rupees 71,326,876, equivalent 
 to ^4,755,125. This amounts to rupees 280 or 
 ^18 135. 4^/. for each family, or rupees 50 (^3 6^". 8^/.) 
 for each individual. The annual income of the non- 
 agricultural class was somewhat larger. This difference 
 was due to the fact that the class is not homogeneous, 
 as it includes on the one hand all forms of industrial 
 labour, skilled and unskilled, and on the other hand
 
 8o ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 all the clerical and learned professions and the land- 
 owners. Amongst the latter the average income is 
 very much higher than the average income of cultiva- 
 tors. Traders and shopkeepers differ in their incomes 
 very greatly, containing amongst their numbers some 
 of the wealthiest families in the district, but in the 
 average being little better off than the ordinary cultiva- 
 tor. The total annual income of the non-agricultural 
 population was ascertained to be rupees 25,051,479 or 
 ^1,670,098 and the average income to be rupees 293 
 or ^19 lis. per family and rupees 58 or nearly £4. for 
 each individual. The average income of both classes 
 together amounted to rupees 282 per annum or ys. 3^. 
 per week for each family. 
 
 It will be convenient to deal with the population 
 in future by families, as the most important part of the 
 investigation was the allocation of each family to one 
 of the four economic classes, according as its circum- 
 stances exhibited or approximated to a condition of 
 comfort or a condition of physical want. As has been 
 explained this classification was based upon the 
 apparent condition of the family as revealed by personal 
 inspection rather than upon any calculation of income, 
 but the average incomes which the mass of figures 
 yielded for the four classes corresponded very fairly 
 with the totals of the normal domestic budgets which 
 had been arrived at by an examination of expenditure 
 in selected families in the four economic conditions. 
 Of the population examined 167,139 families, or very 
 nearly half the total population, were classified as living 
 in circumstances of comfort, 96,294 families, or more 
 than half the remainder, as living in a condition which 
 although below comfort was yet above hardship, 63,969
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 8i 
 
 families, or i8| per cent, of the total population, as in 
 straitened circumstances although out of the reach of 
 physical want, and 14,706 families, or 4*3 per cent., as 
 struggling in the grip of want. The income of the 
 average family in these four classes was ascertained 
 to be : 
 
 Comfort (49 per cent.) : Rupees 365 per annum or 
 gs. \d. per week. 
 
 Below comfort (28 per cent.) : Rupees 233 per annum 
 or 65. per week. 
 
 Above indigence (18-2 per cent.): Rupees 166 per 
 annum or 45'. 3^. per week. 
 
 Indigence (4I per cent.) : Rupees 115 per annum or 
 3^". per week. 
 
 In the average these figures of income probably 
 represent correctly the facts, although the income of 
 indigent families is often so precarious and so largely 
 made up of charity as to be impossible of exact 
 calculation. 
 
 No useful purpose is attained by continuing to 
 examine the economic condition of the people as a 
 whole when the manner of life of the agricultural and 
 the non-agricultural sections is so different. In the 
 first place, the cultivators are a homogeneous class ; 
 none are really wealthy and those who are exception- 
 ally prosperous and produce far more than is needed 
 to maintain them in comfort are as few as those who 
 are living in a condition bordering on physical want. 
 In the non-agricultural group, on the other hand, all 
 economic conditions are represented, the wealthy land- 
 owner with an enormous income, the lawyer with a 
 large and lucrative practice, the Government official 
 with a fixed and comfortable income, the miserly 
 
 1908 ■ F
 
 8a ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 moneylender with large profits, the prosperous shop- 
 keeper with his fluctuating returns, and at the other 
 end of the scale the weaver working desperately for 
 a subsistence in a declining market, the anxious fisher- 
 man with a precarious catch, the struggling clerk and 
 doctor, the petty trader with his uncertain profits and 
 th^ rude unskilled labourer earning when in work far 
 more than his simple needs require. In the second 
 place, the statistics collected from the two classes were 
 collected in a different manner. The classification of 
 non-cultivators, although dependent at bottom upon 
 observation, was necessarily largely influenced by the 
 statements of earnings provided by the individual, 
 whereas the cultivator's homestead with its live stock 
 and its store of grain was a sufficient clue to his economic 
 condition, and his statements were really only of 
 importance in recording the crops which he sold and 
 his earnings from subsidiary employments. In these 
 circumstances the classification of cultivators can be 
 accepted with much greater confidence and requires 
 fewer qualifications and exceptions than the classifica- 
 tion of the non-cultivators. 
 
 Of agricultural families, 49-2 per cent, were classified 
 as living ' in comfort', 28| per cent, 'below comfort', 
 1 8 per cent. ' above want ', and 4 per cent. ' in want '. 
 It is clear that the agricultural wealth of the district 
 is divided with considerable fairness in such a way 
 that the great majority of the cultivators have a reason- 
 able share. This is no country of capitalist farmers 
 with bloated farms and an army of parasitic and 
 penurious labourers. The average income per head 
 was calculated at rupees 60 for those ' in comfort ', 
 rupees 43 for those ' below comfort ', rupees 34 for
 
 FXONOMIC CONDITION 83 
 
 those ' above want ', and rupees 27 for those ' in want', 
 as compared with averages of rupees 50 and rupees 20 
 in the model budgets for comfort and extreme indigence. 
 It is true that these figures of average income are 
 largely the result of a calculation which is explained in 
 the Appendix ; but they agree remarkably well in the 
 three lower classes with average incomes of non- 
 agriculturalists which were based throughout upon 
 information, so that it is clear that the estimates of 
 consumption afforded a very accurate basis for the 
 calculation. The general accuracy of the figures of 
 income is also proved, as will be shown later, by 
 a valuation of the total agricultural produce of the 
 district. In both cases the testimony to the accuracy 
 of the figures is independent, as the model budgets 
 were prepared before any tabulation of non-agricultural 
 income or of crop statistics was begun. 
 
 Although the main dependence of the cultivators 
 is upon agriculture there is a great deal of subsidiary 
 employment. Much of this is of a very trivial kind 
 and involves a very small addition to the annual 
 income, but altogether 44 in every hundred families 
 obtain some additional earnings in this way. Sub- 
 sidiary employment is not at all confined to the poorer 
 classes, as in every hundred families 44 of the com- 
 fortable, 41 of those below comfort, 47 of those above 
 want, and 55 of the indigent engage in subsidiary 
 employment. I am not able to give any details of these 
 employments nor of the total amounts earned by them, 
 as these statistics were unfortunately left behind in 
 India. Menial and domestic service, fishing and weaving^ 
 were the most common of them. They do not include 
 agricultural labour for hire, of which separate statistics 
 
 F 2
 
 84 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 were kept. There was naturally a very great deal 
 of this in a country in which the jute crop is so 
 prominent, but the hired labourer in the English sense 
 does not exist in the district. At harvest time, as 
 already described, a considerable proportion of all 
 cultivators work for hire, some even engaging labour 
 to cut their own crops and going off themselves as 
 labourers to cut the crops of other people. Similar 
 arrangements are not uncommon in the steeping and 
 stripping of the jute fibre. The proportion of agri- 
 cultural labourers amongst the poorer families was 
 naturally much greater than amongst the richer, but 
 not by any means to the extent which might have been 
 expected. The participation of the richer is no doubt 
 due largely to the good wages obtainable for labour 
 on the jute crop ; while many of the most comfortable 
 cultivators are employed in harvesting the crops of 
 neighbouring- districts to which the prejudice against 
 work for hire on the village fields under the eyes of 
 the neighbours does not extend. Of the cultivators in 
 comfort 2 2 per cent, of those below comfort 31 per 
 cent, of those above want 36 per cent, and of the 
 indigent ^'j per cent, were enumerated as engaged in 
 agricultural labour. It is probable that amongst all 
 these there were none who were exclusively agricultural 
 labourers, that is to say, labourers in the English sense 
 of the term. All had their land, some perhaps very 
 inadequate in amount, but others only inadequate 
 because the family contained at the time an undue 
 proportion of young children. The landless labourer 
 so common in England is unknown in Faridpur and 
 very rare anywhere in Eastern Bengal. The propor- 
 tion of the indigent supported by agricultural labour
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 85 
 
 is not larger mainly because this class consists of old 
 men who are unfit for the work and of families whose 
 breadwinner has died before his time. 
 
 Statistics were kept of cultivators who buy part of 
 their food. They were required in order to obtain 
 correct figures of income, for the sum spent in buying 
 food had of course to be deducted when a valuation of 
 all food consumed by the family was added to the other 
 income or earninos of the families to find the total 
 income. The fissures also were of interest for other 
 reasons. Fifty years ago the cultivator in Eastern 
 Bengal grew the whole of his food upon his own land, 
 or, if his land was not adequate for the purpose, worked 
 as a hired labourer in harvesting for others and 
 obtained as his wages part of the crop which he had 
 harvested. Since the introduction of jute, however, 
 and its wide extension throughout Eastern Bengal, 
 some of the cultivators have given up the growing 
 of their whole food supply on a calculation that it 
 would be more profitable to grow jute and buy grain. 
 It is probable that no cultivator has ceased altogether 
 to grow his own food. Although nearly all the land 
 of Eastern Bengal is suitable for the rice crop, only 
 a portion of it is suitable for jute ; and it is rare that 
 the whole holding of any cultivator is fit to grow jute. 
 Nowadays the cultivator tends to grow jute on all the 
 land fit for the purpose and to grow rice and other 
 food crops only on the remainder. If that remainder is 
 insufficient to supply the family requirements in food, 
 he prefers to buy rather than to reduce the amount of 
 land under jute. Of late years the price of jute has 
 usually been so remunerative that even in the worst 
 years he has had more than sufficient to purchase the
 
 86 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 food necessary, but the price of jute fluctuates very 
 considerably and in some years there has been a very 
 small margin. At the beginning of the present war 
 the jute market collapsed completely, with the result 
 that for the first time for many years the cultivators 
 in Eastern Bengal were short of money with which to 
 buy their food ; and it is probable that it will be many 
 years before they again become so trustful as to grow 
 less food than the family needs for the consumption 
 of the year. On the statistics 41 per cent, of all agri- 
 cultural families bought food grain, spending by their 
 own statements an amount which was equivalent 
 in the average to about two months' supply of the 
 family consumption. It is possible that some families 
 in the north of the district have not enough land to 
 grow their own food supply in any case and will not 
 be able to supplement the deficiency completely by 
 ordinary agricultural labour. In such a family some 
 members usually take service or go as boatmen ; but 
 the number of families in which this is necessary is 
 certainly very small and may be neglected. 
 
 It is possible with these figures to estimate the 
 number of families in the district who feed themselves 
 off their own land, the number who can only feed 
 themselves by supplementing their own crops with the 
 earnings of hired labour and the number who volun- 
 tarily omit to grow the whole of their food supply 
 owing'to the superior profit of sowing land with jute. 
 In every hundred families it would appear that 35 feed 
 themselves entirely off their own land, 25 need to work 
 as labourers for complete support and 40 buy grain 
 because they either prefer to grow jute or are unable 
 to feed themselves, but certainly far more often because 
 they prefer to grow jute.
 
 li:CONOMIC CONDITION 87 
 
 Statistics were also kept of the number of families 
 who sell crops. These were returned at 215,612, or 
 80 per cent, of all agricultural families. The remain- 
 ing 20 per cent, would be exclusively the poorer class 
 of the agricultural community. The value of the crops 
 sold was returned at rupees 16,955,724, or rupees 80 
 for each family. This sum represents certainly less 
 than half of the total agricultural produce and consider- 
 ably less than half of the annual income of the family 
 expressed in cash. However, as most cultivators sell 
 their produce in driblets, it is doubtful if their state- 
 ments of totals are very accurate. 
 
 From the total figures of food production in the 
 district it is possible to test by independent evidence 
 the accuracy of the calculation of the total income 
 of the agricultural classes. These figures were com- 
 piled after a detailed survey of every field in the 
 district and are therefore as accurate as it is possible 
 to make them. The prices at which the produce is 
 valued are the prices which were ruling at the time when 
 the economic investigation was made and which were 
 used not only in preparing standard budgets but also in 
 converting the food supply of the family into its money 
 equivalent. The figures may be therefore accepted as 
 a trustworthy test of the accuracy of the economic 
 information. If the value of the total production and 
 the total income of the agricultural classes approxi- 
 mately agree, it may be taken that the classification 
 by economic condition has been well and truly made, 
 as the chief part in the estimation of their income was 
 the valuation of the food supply which was necessary 
 to keep the family in that condition in which it was 
 observed to be. The figures are : —
 
 SM 
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 Valuation of Produce in Faridpur at Prices Ruling 
 IN THE Years 1906-10. 
 
 Total 
 net value. 
 
 
 
 
 Net value per acre 
 
 
 
 
 of crop after 
 
 Crop. 
 
 
 Acreage. 
 
 deduction of cost 
 
 of cultivation. 
 
 Rs. 
 
 Rice 
 
 
 1,074,000 
 
 37h 
 
 Other food crops 
 
 
 176,000 
 
 25/ 
 
 Oil seeds . 
 
 . 
 
 44,000 
 
 20/ 
 
 Jute. 
 
 
 160,000 
 
 75/ 
 
 Betel and sugar-cane 
 
 13,000 
 
 60/ 
 
 Miscellaneous . 
 
 
 35,000 
 
 10/ 
 
 Grasses . 
 
 , 
 
 40,000 
 
 20/ 
 
 Fruit and garden 
 
 pro- 
 
 
 
 duce 
 
 
 6g,ooo 
 
 8/ 
 
 
 
 Total in round figures Rs. 
 
 Rs. 
 
 40,275,000 
 
 4,400,000 
 
 880,000 
 
 12,000,000 
 780,000 
 350,000 
 800,000 
 
 552,000 
 60,000,000 
 
 The net value is naturally not the same in all parts 
 of the district, being less than the amount adopted in 
 this valuation in the north and more in the south of 
 the district. The statistics of income of the cultivating 
 classes, which included receipts by the sale of live stock 
 and dairy produce and the very considerable earnings 
 obtained from subsidiary employments, give a total 
 income of rupees 71,300,000, which agrees very well 
 with the valuation of the annual produce. 
 
 In dealing with the non-agricultural population I am 
 much handicapped by the absence of detailed figures 
 of income and classification for the families engaged in 
 each occupation. These statistics have unfortunately 
 been left in India. The non-agricultural population 
 contains such very diverse elements that it is very 
 misleading to consider only the total figures for the 
 whole. More than one-third of the whole consists of the 
 class locally known as ' bhadralok ' or the respectable, 
 and includes landlords, clerks and professional men,
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 89 
 
 another third consists of the inckistrial population, one- 
 fifth of traders, and one-tenth of domestic or menial 
 servants. No valuable information can be expected 
 from statistics which are so comprehensive as to 
 embrace landlords and fishermen, clerks and coolies in 
 the same set of figures. In the absence of separate 
 statistics a few comments on the different elements 
 must be made. 
 
 The respectable classes belong almost entirely to the 
 three highest Hindu castes — Brahmin, Kayasth and 
 Baidya — with a few Muhammadans of birth, breeding, 
 or education. Nearly one-half {12,771 families) are 
 landlords who support themselves partly or wholly upon 
 the rents paid by their tenants, another quarter (6,935 
 families) are maintained by the professions, law, medi- 
 cine or the priesthood, and the remainder (7,629 fami- 
 lies) are clerks, either in Government employ or in the 
 employ of landlords or traders. The ' bhadralok ' 
 is a very important class in Eastern Bengal, con- 
 taining every man of education and influence and 
 nearly every man of wealth in the district along with 
 a considerable substratum of excessive poverty. Very 
 careful statistics about them were collected and a very 
 careful classification was made of their economic con- 
 dition ; but the results, which were valuable and 
 interesting, are not available. Generally speaking, the 
 ' bhadralok ' lives in a condition of considerable comfort 
 upon an average income which is much higher than the 
 average in any other class of the community, although 
 this is very largely due to the big incomes which the 
 more successful enjoy. On the other hand, too large 
 a proportion of the class lives in grinding poverty. 
 The landlords divide about four million rupees
 
 90 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 a year between them ; the share of each in an equal 
 division would not be sufficient to place him greatly 
 above the standard of ' comfort ' amonost cultivators. 
 A considerable proportion are, however, wealthy men, 
 and of the remainder many are partly maintained by 
 some subsidiary employment, one or other of the sons 
 earning a living in a profession and contributing the 
 bulk of his earnings to the support of the family left at 
 home. 
 
 Clerks are ill-paid in any country, although clerks 
 in Government service in Bengal are far better 
 paid than their fellows in most of the countries 
 of Europe ; clerks in shops and in trade, on the 
 other hand, are generally very poorly paid. The 
 salaries of clerks and agents in the employ of land- 
 owners are always miserable, but this class has from 
 time immemorial supplemented its pay by exactions 
 on a generous scale, with the help of which it has 
 succeeded in maintaining itself as one of the most 
 flourishing sections of the community. The agent 
 of a landlord whose pay is 3 rupees a month will 
 rarely be content with less than 30 or 40 rupees 
 a month obtained by these peculiar means and 
 a superior agent whose salary may be 5 or 10 rupees 
 a month will usually have a real income of 100 rupees 
 or more. This prosperity is ill-deserved, as the class is 
 as a whole ignorant, disloyal to its employers, prone to 
 swindling, selfish and rapacious to an incredible extent. 
 
 Amongst the professional men the priests are a very 
 ill-paid class, and the Brahmin priest has fallen on very 
 evil days ; formerly he lived in comfort in the odour of 
 sanctity, now he struggjes along in an atmosphere 
 which is little removed from contempt. Doctors make
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 91 
 
 a moderate but not excessive income, if they are well 
 qualified ; but the ignorant get very little custom. 
 The number of doctors in the district is singularly 
 few, so that they would undoubtedly make an excellent 
 living, if people generally had any faith in their capa- 
 city. As it is, most of the inhabitants prefer to die 
 rather than go to a doctor. The lawyers are the spoilt 
 children of Bengal life. They make an income entirely 
 disproportionate to their abilities ; thus an able lawyer 
 will make five or ten times as much in a year as an 
 equally able doctor, and even an incapable lawyer will 
 make a better income than most capable members of 
 other professions. 
 
 Amongst traders the money-lenders are commonly 
 affluent, as is the habit of their kind ; but the ordinary 
 trader in general has a hard struggle ; only those in 
 the larger markets who engage in rice, oil or general 
 trade, or the middlemen in the jute trade make large 
 profits. Indeed, the general condition of trade in 
 Faridpur is one of stagnation owing to the lack of 
 easy means of communication. In the north-west so 
 few roads exist that during the season when the rivers 
 have dried up the transport of produce is almost 
 impossible, which has all the more depressing an effect 
 upon general trade since it is at this period of the year 
 that the reaping of the main harvest has put money 
 freely into the hands of the population. How great 
 an effect easy communications have upon local pros- 
 perity is displayed with peculiar emphasis in this 
 district. In the south-west all trade is carried by 
 water, as the rivers and streams are very numerous 
 and serve every village throughout the year. If 
 a traveller walks through the northern part of the
 
 92 PXONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 district in January or February and on to the south- 
 west, he cannot fail to be struck by the contrast 
 between the two. The one region shows no visible 
 signs of prosperity and appears to be completely stag- 
 nant, the other is full of movement, the markets are 
 crowded and ply a thriving trade, the rivers and 
 streams are full of boats at all hours of the day and 
 the people generally show every sign of alertness 
 and prosperity. 
 
 Of that section of the population which is engaged 
 in industry there is little to be said. It amounts 
 altogether only to 8 per cent, of the total, and of 
 this small proportion not one in three could by any 
 stretching of the term be described as skilled. The 
 great majority of unskilled labourers work as porters, 
 or on earthwork on the roads or the numerous ponds. 
 They earn good money, at busy times as much as 
 one rupee a day and generally between 15 and 
 20 rupees a month. They are very ignorant and 
 have few wants and a low standard of living, so that 
 as a body they may be described as in a very com- 
 fortable condition. Weaving, which used to be a 
 vigorous industry, has been killed partly by the im- 
 portation of foreign or factory-made cotton goods and 
 partly by the ravages of malaria, which has always 
 made great inroads u[)on the colonies of sedentary 
 weavers. A very large number of weavers have bought 
 land and become ordinary cultivators. Of those 
 who still continue to weave the most prosperous are 
 Muhammadans, who show more enterprise than Hindus. 
 The total number of families who mainly depend upon 
 the industry is now only 4,200, whose total income was 
 reported at 721,765 rupees, providing in the average for
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 93 
 
 each family considerably less than the amount necessary 
 to maintain a standard of comfort. Fishermen who fish 
 for the market are congregated in small colonies along 
 all the large rivers. They number 6,506 families with 
 a total annual income of 1,298,983 rupees, which give 
 an average somewhat higher than the averacre income 
 of the weaver, but considerably lower than the average 
 income of the cultivator. They are however a class 
 with few desires to satisfy and they have a standard of 
 comfort which is considerably lower than the standard 
 of the cultivator. Generally speaking, they succeed in 
 feeding themselves and their families as fully as their 
 hearts desire. 
 
 Domestic and menial servants are chiefly employed 
 by shopkeepers, landowners and the educated, but 
 also to some extent by the more prosperous cultivators 
 and traders. In comparison with the rest of the 
 community they are probably better paid than the 
 same class in Europe. 
 
 All classifications and ficrures of income for the 
 non-agricultural population as a whole are somewhat 
 fallacious owino- to the mixture of such diverse ele- 
 ments ; but a comparison with the agricultural popula- 
 tion is not without interest. 
 
 rcentages of the population 
 
 classified as — 
 
 
 
 
 Agricultural. 
 
 Non- 
 
 agricultural. 
 
 In comfort 
 Below comfort . 
 Above want 
 In want 
 
 49^ 
 
 18 
 4 
 
 
 47 
 27 
 20 
 Si 
 
 It will be seen that the condition of the non-cultivator 
 is generally worse than the condition of the cultivator.
 
 94 
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 
 
 If the ' bhadralok ', the moneylenders and the large 
 traders were eliminated, the non-cultivator would 
 come far worse out of the comparison. The average 
 individual income in the several economic groups is 
 substantially the same in the two classes, the excess 
 in the income of the ' comfortable ' non-cultivator being 
 entirely due to the inclusion of the landlords and suc- 
 cessful traders and ' bhadralok ' in the group. The 
 figures of income per head are : — 
 
 
 Annual average 
 
 Annual average 
 
 
 income 
 
 of 
 
 income of 
 
 
 a cultivator. 
 
 a non-cultivator. 
 
 
 Rs. 
 
 
 Rs. 
 
 In comfort . 
 
 60 
 
 
 80 
 
 Below comfort 
 
 43 
 
 
 42 
 
 Above want 
 
 34 
 
 
 31 
 
 In want 
 
 27 
 
 
 24 
 
 The statistics collected were, as I have already 
 mentioned, less trustworthy for the non-agricultural 
 population than for the agricultural, but they reflect 
 in the main the lessons which ordinary observation 
 teaches. It is unfortunate that owing to the absence 
 of detailed figures it is impossible to separate the 
 successful from the ordinary members of each economic 
 group ; thus, in trade, had the larger traders in the 
 great markets been separated in the statistics, the 
 economic condition of the ordinary trader would 
 have been apparent. Similarly, had the incomes 
 of the larger landowners been separated the struggle 
 for subsistence of the great majority would have been 
 open to view. However, the figures sufficiently illus- 
 trate the dominant feature of economic conditions in 
 Faridpur^ — that the whole community really depends
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITION 95 
 
 upon agriculture for its livelihood. All the richest 
 families in the district are parasites upon agriculture, 
 the landowners who live on rents and give no service 
 in return, the lawyers who live on litigation and help 
 the peasant to waste his profits, the moneylenders who 
 live on the necessities of the poor and the goldsmiths 
 who cater for their extravagance. Apart from the 
 produce of the soil, there is little indeed to support 
 life in Faridpur. Jute is the only valuable export, and 
 the import trade is very dull. A large trade passes 
 through the district, but none of it is handled by its 
 inhabitants. Weavers might be removed without any 
 substantial loss to the prosperity of the district. Indeed, 
 fishermen alone add anything appreciable to the pro- 
 duce of the soil. Not only is agriculture the whole 
 of the economic life in Faridpur, but, as is proper, it 
 has the best of that life, for the produce of the soil 
 is not unfairly divided amongst the cultivating com- 
 munity. If inequality is the rule of life, at least there 
 is in Faridpur amongst the peasants no undue pro- 
 portion of families who are very poor, while amongst 
 the great majority inequalities of income are not too 
 greatly emphasized. Amongst that small non-agri- 
 cultural population which does not depend upon the 
 soil for its living conditions are much more unequal. 
 A considerable proportion is far richer than even the 
 most affluent of the cultivators ; the great majority is 
 certainly poorer than the mass of the cultivators ; and 
 there is a large minority very much poorer still, who 
 have only a few unfortunates as counterpart in the 
 aofricultural world.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 One of the subjects most often discussed in con- 
 nexion with India is the burden of debt borne by the 
 Indian cultivator. As one writer has put it ' the culti- 
 vator is born in debt, increases his debt throughout 
 his life and dies more hopelessly in debt than ever'. 
 Many theories have been invented to account for this 
 state of things and many remedies proposed to end 
 it ; but I believe that nobody has ever attempted to 
 calculate or to estimate the total amount of debt in the 
 whole of any province, of any district, or even of any 
 village ; or to base a campaign against it upon a 
 comprehensive survey of the whole ground which it 
 covers. Of late years, in connexion with the move- 
 ment for co-operative credit, a good deal of information 
 has been collected about individual villages and about 
 the history of indebtedness of individuals in such 
 villages ; but I know that in my own province even 
 the Registrar of Co-operative Credit Societies has 
 no information of a comprehensive kind and no means 
 of estimating the total amount of debt amongst the 
 cultivators of the province which it is the business of 
 his department ultimately to relieve. During the course 
 of our economic investigations in Faridpur we paid 
 a good deal of attention to the question of debt and 
 we recorded the total indebtedness of every family, 
 whether agricultural or non-agricultural. It was of
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 97 
 
 course impossible to attempt any detailed enquiry into 
 the history of the indebtedness of each individual, but 
 much miscellaneous information could not fail to be 
 obtained in the mere cross-examination necessary for 
 the elucidation of the exact amount which each culti- 
 vator owed. Thus it was discovered that cultivators 
 who borrow much rarely deal with a single money- 
 lender. If they have mortgaged their fields to the 
 hilt they will pledge jewellery with another lender to 
 obtain more money for immediate necessities or if, as 
 often happens in Faridpur, their land consists of two 
 or more separate holdings under different landlords, 
 they will mortgage each holding to a separate money- 
 lender. They may borrow more money from a third 
 moneylender on the security of the growing crop and 
 they may pledge jewellery to fourth and fifth money- 
 lenders to obtain fresh loans. The prudent cultivator 
 who was little in debt usually dealt with a single money- 
 lender and the amount of his debt was easily ascertained. 
 The spendthrift, on the other hand, was in the nature 
 of things careless of money and careless of accounts, 
 and it was often difficult to find out his real position in 
 his dealings with his many friends. But all information 
 which was obtained concerning the history of indebted- 
 ness was collected as a result of enquiries into the 
 total amount of indebtedness, as there was not time 
 to make any detailed enquiry into the way in which 
 the debt had grown up. 
 
 In the total population brought under review it was 
 found that in the whole district the total amount of 
 debt was ^1,343,148, of which ^943,729 was incurred 
 by cultivators and ;^399,4i9 by non-cultivators. In- 
 cluding families which were omitted and allowing for 
 
 1908 G
 
 98 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 the subsequent increase in population, the total in- 
 debtedness of the district may be estimated now at 
 230 lakhs of rupees or ^1,500,000, of which the share of 
 the agricultural population would be rather more than 
 two-thirds. It was found that 55 per cent, of all cultiva- 
 tors were free from debt and that of the 45 per cent, who 
 were in debt more than a half were in debt to a less 
 amount than one-quarter of their annual income. The 
 actual fio-ures were as follows : — total number of agri- 
 cultural families in debt 116,466, number in debt to 
 the extent of a quarter of their income or less 60,146, 
 number in debt to about a half of their income 33,760, 
 number in debt to the extent approximately of a year's 
 income 18,41 1, number in debt to the extent of more than 
 a year's income 4,149. It will be observed that those 
 who are hopelessly involved form only a small fraction 
 of the agricultural population, only in fact if per cent. 
 Of non-agriculturalists j'^ per cent, were free from debt. 
 This is probably due to the fact that fishermen and un- 
 skilled labourers have little credit ; but the figures which 
 might support this statement are in India, and the non- 
 agricultural population is so diverse a body that generali- 
 zations are dangerous. Although the number of families 
 in debt at all amongst non-cultivators was proportion- 
 ately much smaller than amongst the cultivators, yet 
 the number heavily involved was very much larger. 
 This is certainly due to the distressed ' bhadralok ', who 
 is by virtue of his superior social position able to 
 obtain loans far beyond the value of his securities. 
 Amongst cultivators the average debt of each family 
 in debt was about £2>, or 121 rupees, while amongst 
 non-cultivators it amounted to the much larger sum of 
 258 rupees or £1"] 4^. In the district as a whole the
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 99 
 
 debt amounted to 1 1 rupees per head of the popula- 
 tion and to 59 rupees for each family, or roughly to 
 one-fifth of the annual income. 
 
 This sum is not perhaps unduly large, but it is 
 clearly larger than any one had expected. The efforts 
 of the co-operative credit societies to deal with debt 
 seem very small when placed against these huge 
 figures. In Faridpur, although the societies have been 
 in existence ten years, they have not as yet touched 
 one-hundredth part of the indebtedness of the district. 
 
 The problem of debt is very complex, as is sufficiently 
 shown by the evenness with which debt is distributed 
 amongst the more prosperous and the poorer classes 
 of the community. This is most apparent amongst 
 the cultivators, as they are a homogeneous class whose 
 material circumstances are in general not very dissimilar. 
 Nearly half the whole debt was incurred by cultivators 
 who were classified as reaching a standard of comfort. 
 As might be expected, however, very few of these were 
 heavily involved, only one in a hundred being in debt 
 to a greater amount than a year's income and only 
 five in a hundred being in debt to more than half 
 a year's income. Amongst cultivators classified as 
 living in comfort 80 per cent, are either without debt 
 or in debt only in a very small amount. Of the lowest 
 class of all — the indigent — 48 per cent, or nearly one- 
 half are without debt, 3 per cent, are in debt to more 
 than a year's income and 1 1 per cent, to more than 
 half a year's income. These figures are at first view 
 somewhat surprising, as it might have been expected 
 that indebtedness would afflict the whole of this class 
 much more severely. The truth is that most of these 
 people are too poor to have any credit, and there is 
 
 G <x
 
 loo INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 too much competition for loans to tempt the lenders 
 to venture money with so little prospect of return. In 
 the intermediate classes of those who live neither in 
 comfort nor in actual want the percentage seriously 
 in debt is very considerable, amounting to more than 
 one-tenth of the whole body and to a much more 
 formidable proportion of those who are indebted at 
 all. It would be tedious to go into the figures in 
 any further detail as they are reproduced in one of 
 the tables appended to this book. They show that 
 Muhammadans incur debt more eagerly than Hindus ; 
 on the whole the Hindu cultivator is thrifty and when 
 he borrows rarely rushes into ruin at the same head- 
 long pace as his Muhammadan brother. 
 
 The great majority of agricultural debtors get into 
 debt through improvident expenditure upon domestic 
 ceremonies and in particular upon marriages. The 
 sum spent upon the marriage of a son or daughter, 
 both by Hindus and Muhammadans of the cultivating 
 classes, is quite out of proportion to the incomes of 
 the families. It is no uncommon thing for a whole or 
 half a year's income to be spent, of which a great 
 part goes upon entertaining the guests. Each culti- 
 vator, especially among Muhammadans, tries to make 
 a greater display than was made at the previous 
 marriage in the village, and in order to do so many 
 have to borrow money on an extravagant scale. Apart 
 from such extravagance debts are incurred to replace 
 cattle which have died or to build houses which have 
 been burnt down. From such enquiries as were made 
 debts originally incurred for other causes are very few. 
 Once a debt has been incurred it mounts with amazing 
 rapidity. The interest is high, never less than 36 per
 
 INDEBTEDNESS loi 
 
 cent., often 48 per cent, and more ; and the interest is 
 added to the principal every year and sometimes every 
 half-year, when it is usual for the moneylender to take 
 a fresh bond for the increased amount. Perhaps half 
 of the total debt throughout the district is really the 
 result of compound interest. In almost every case in 
 which an enquiry has been made the sum which the 
 cultivator actually received from the moneylender is 
 far smaller than the sum mentioned in the bond. 
 
 A great deal of the money which appears in these 
 loan statements has been borrowed on the security of 
 the family jewellery. As the cultivator invests his 
 saving in a good year in jewellery, this form of 
 borrowing is little different from realizing his invest- 
 ments, but it is very wasteful and involves a heavy 
 reduction in his income, as the interest paid on these 
 loans is usually very high, 36 per cent, compound 
 being perhaps the normal rate. 
 
 Another wasteful form of borrowing is to borrow on 
 the security of a sown crop. The repayment is usually 
 made in kind, that is to say, a proportion of the crop, 
 and a very undue proportion, is made over to the 
 moneylender in liquidation of the loan. Loans of this 
 type are contracted by the cultivator at the leanest 
 periods of the year, when he is about to sow his crop 
 and wants money to purchase seeds, or just before the 
 harvest when his own food supply has run short. 
 I have known cases of this kind in which the return 
 to the moneylender after two or three months is pro- 
 duce to the value of three or five times the original 
 loan. Such loans are always paid off in full at the 
 time stipulated, as the moneylender sends a man to 
 take away his share of the produce as soon as the
 
 102 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 crop is cut. Short-term loans of this nature are not 
 included in the statements of indebtedness and no 
 accurate estimate of their amount can be given. It is 
 probable that one cultivator in five or one in ten con- 
 tracts them and that in the total the sum borrowed 
 does not involve an addition of more than 5 per cent. 
 to the indebtedness of the agricultural classes. 
 
 In considering the problem of debt, it is more useful 
 to view it in relation to the agricultural population as 
 a whole, to ignore the effect upon the individual and to 
 confine attention to the effect upon the mass. Upon 
 the mass a debt which is equal to one-fifth of the 
 annual income is not in itself a crushing burden, even 
 when it bears so high a rate of interest as to involve 
 the payment in interest alone of the earnings of one 
 month in every year of the whole agricultural popula- 
 tion. The heaviness of the interest would no doubt 
 make repayment of the principal more difficult ; but if 
 the debt were divided amongst the cultivators propor- 
 tionately to income, repayment within a measurable 
 time might with thrift and organization be effected. 
 Society is not however a charitable organization so 
 that it is impossible to assume the pooling of the incomes 
 of the solvent to liquidate the debts of the necessitous. 
 As 55 per cent, of all cultivators are entirely free from 
 debt and another 20 per cent, have borrowed very 
 little, the income available for the reduction of debt is 
 the income of only one quarter of the population, 
 which already finds the earnings of four months in the 
 year swallowed up in the payment of interest. With 
 the greatest economy repayment or reduction of 
 principal is clearly impossible. It would seem that 
 the disturbing factor in the problem is not the amount
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 103 
 
 which has been borrowed but the interest which is 
 payable on the loan, and that the economic welfare of 
 the district would be better secured by a general 
 reduction in the rate of interest than by the repayment 
 of principal, because the real injury to the cultivators 
 lies in the curtailment of their spending power and 
 therefore of their standard of living which is made 
 necessary by the large payments of interest. Could 
 the rate of interest upon all loans be reduced to 10 per 
 cent, no extravagant proposal, the agricultural popu- 
 lation as a whole would save three weeks' earnings 
 for themselves and sacrifice only a single week's 
 earnings to the moneylender, while the indebted 
 quarter of the agricultural population would save three 
 months' earnings in the year and sacrifice only one to 
 the moneylender. 
 
 Any comprehensive campaign against debt in the 
 interests of the district as a whole would necessarily 
 have three distinct phases, of which the first and most 
 important would be the reduction of interest, the second 
 would be the repayment of principal, and the third 
 would be the avoidance of fresh debt by the inculcation 
 of thrift. 
 
 Although there can be no doubt of the importance 
 of a general reduction in the rate of interest to the 
 economic welfare of the district, there can be no hope 
 of its being achieved in the ordinary economic way by 
 the correlation of demand and supply. It is probable 
 that all money in the hands of professional money- 
 lenders is always out on loan and can only be obtained 
 on competitive terms. In the scarcity of 1906 the 
 moneylender was sucked so dry that no money was 
 available for loan to cultivators with even the best
 
 104 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 security. If the rate of interest is to be reduced, it 
 cannot be done through the agency of the money- 
 lender. New sources must be tapped, which means in 
 Indian conditions either a system of State banks or 
 a system of co-operative credit amongst the cultivators. 
 The Government of India has already rejected the 
 Egyptian system of Land Banks financed by the State, 
 on good and sufficient grounds, if Faridpur is any 
 guide to debt in the rest of India or Bengal, as a capital 
 of 200 millions sterling would be required in India and 
 40 millions sterling in Bengal, amounts which it would 
 be impossible to raise now, even if it had been possible 
 before the war. As an alternative the Government of 
 India has initiated and encouraged a system of co- 
 operative credit amongst the cultivators by forming 
 co-operative credit societies in various villages and by 
 organizing an official staff to inspect their accounts 
 and to persuade other cultivators in the neighbour- 
 hood to form additional societies. Very little State 
 money has been lent to the societies and no financial 
 responsibility has been accepted by the State. 
 
 The first question which naturally arises in any 
 consideration of this policy is whether the resources 
 of the cultivators as a body are sufficient to meet the 
 demands of the borrowers amongst them. This must 
 remain a matter of opinion, as no information is avail- 
 able on the subject. Personally I have no doubt that 
 they are substantially sufficient in the district of 
 Faridpur. After all, the total debt is only one-fifth 
 of the total annual income and therefore not beyond 
 the reach of the accumulated profits of a few years, if 
 those profits could be drawn forth and employed. The 
 fact that 55 per cent, of the more prosperous cultivators
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 105 
 
 in the district are without debt combined with the 
 knowledge of the extent to which they now invest their 
 savings in jewellery for their womenfolk shows that 
 there is already sufficient capital amongst the cultivators 
 themselves to meet all the needs for the year of their 
 more necessitous brethren. No doubt co-operative 
 credit societies would shrink from jeopardizing their 
 resources in loans to cultivators who were heavily 
 involved ; but only 9 per cent, of the cultivators are 
 indebted to the extent of a year's income or more. If 
 the State could be induced to assist in the recovery of 
 these cultivators by taking over some part of the loans, 
 co-operative credit might be trusted to deal with the 
 rest, while the liability of the State would be very 
 small and would not extend in any case to more than 
 5 per cent, of the total indebtedness of the district. 
 
 The purpose of this study is the statement of 
 economic fact and not the advancement of theory or 
 the suggestion of reform. If I venture to make a few 
 comments on the subject of agricultural indebtedness, 
 it is only because they are suggested by the course of 
 our own investigations and have not apparently been 
 put forward by other workers in this field. The officers 
 engaged in our investigations without doubt secured 
 the confidence of the cultivators and had great influence 
 with them. They obtained influence partly by the 
 prestige of Government service and partly by their 
 superior education, but chiefly by their knowledge of 
 the agricultural world, and they inspired confidence 
 partly because they were disinterested, but chiefly 
 because they were personally known to every family. 
 These happy results were only achieved by the rule 
 which insisted that all enquiries were to be conducted
 
 io6 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 in the homes of the people and by an allotment of time 
 and space which made a strict observance of the rule 
 possible. Those who know the Indian countryside 
 will not need to be told that the agricultural peasant is 
 prone to suspicion in all things and never more than 
 when it is proposed to lay hands upon his savings. 
 Nothing can be done with him unless his confidence be 
 first secured and little can even then be done except 
 by those who have acquired influence in his village or 
 locality. It is not likely that the issue will be other- 
 wise with co-operative credit. Indeed I venture to 
 think that no real progress will be made with the 
 movement until Government agents of an influential 
 class are employed in sufficient number to enable them 
 to know their agricultural world and the family and 
 home of every inhabitant in their sphere of authority. 
 In Faridpur this would involve the employment of 
 about two hundred agents for inspection and control, 
 who should in a well-organized scheme precede and 
 not follow the establishment of co-operative credit 
 societies in their spheres. At present only two or 
 three men of the type required are employed in the 
 district. 
 
 A staff of such quality and strength would make 
 rapid progress possible in the introduction of co-opera- 
 tive credit, if rapid progress were desired ; but how- 
 ever slowly co-operative credit is or is intended to be 
 built up, it is still — I cannot but think^ — essential as 
 a framework upon which to build. The Government 
 policy in respect of the movement has been announced 
 as a policy of slow and cautious expansion, aiming 
 avowedly at a distant millennium. It is urged in favour 
 of slow expansion that the virtues of the movement lie
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 107 
 
 in teaching the cultivator co-operation and a sense of 
 responsibiHty and that if the movement were pushed 
 at a gallop, these virtues would be likely to be lost 
 sight of in the cloud of dust. There is substance in 
 these views no doubt, but a substance which it is some- 
 times difficult to separate from the shadow. Caution 
 and slowness are comparative terms ; and it is not easy 
 to say how many years of waiting and watching are 
 needed to justify their use. In Faridpur at the present 
 rate of progress, which has not enabled one hundredth 
 part of the ground to be covered in ten years, it would 
 require a thousand years to eliminate the professional 
 moneylender by co-operative effort. Indeed the move- 
 ment has not as yet got any real hold upon the district, 
 nor is it likely to get any real hold until pioneer 
 societies have been established far more widely than 
 at present. If cultivators have to learn the value of 
 the societies, they must at least see them in operation, 
 which cannot be expected while societies are confined 
 to ten centres in a district of four thousand villages, 
 where communications are defective and the villaofers 
 rarely go far from their homes. Were a small society 
 started on a comprehensive plan in every village or 
 every group of villages, the advantages would at least 
 be canvassed by every cultivator and the benefits of 
 co-operation would have some chance of asserting 
 themselves in every corner of the district. Such diffu- 
 sion is not possible without a large staff for organization 
 and control. If a staff of the quality and strength 
 which I have suggested were already in existence, it 
 would be their first duty to arrange the formation of 
 these pioneer societies and to tempt out of the well-to- 
 do cultivators their savings to finance them. At first
 
 io8 INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 the societies would need like all pioneer undertakings 
 continuous care and attention, which it would be the 
 second duty of the official staff to supply. To hope 
 that men as ignorant as the Indian cultivator would be 
 able at once to manage credit societies on co-operative 
 principles in a businesslike manner without the help 
 of advice and audit by some extraneous authority is to 
 sigh for the moon. As soon as pioneer societies had 
 been established and were working smoothly in each 
 little group, it would be the third duty of the official 
 staff to draw the attention of every cultivator in the 
 group to their advantages in the course of friendly 
 conversation and to encourage the formation of new 
 societies. It is, I submit, much more likely that 
 success will be achieved and that the benefits of 
 co-operative credit will be widely appreciated by the 
 cultivators in this way as a result of experience of 
 societies in their own villages and amongst themselves 
 than in watching them or hearing of their wonders in 
 other villages amongst strangers. 
 
 Repayment of principal will naturally not begin con- 
 currently with the formation of co-operative credit 
 societies, although the reduction in the rate of interest 
 places at the disposal of the cultivator some resources 
 for the purpose. The experience of societies which 
 have been already formed shows that the cultivator is 
 inclined to display his appreciation of the value of 
 cheap money by increasing his debt rather than by 
 reducing it. This tendency has been accentuated by 
 the lack of influential advice, as an ignorant cultivator 
 can hardly be expected to realize that the more he 
 borrows from his society, the less is available to rescue 
 others from the moneylender or that repayment has
 
 INDEBTEDNESS 109 
 
 a co-operative value in increasing the resources of his 
 society and enabhng it to extend its operations. In 
 this regard more is to be expected from a competent 
 and sufficient official staff than can have been hitherto 
 attempted. Firmness is necessary and will be effective 
 when the prestige of the official is combined with the 
 solicitude of the friend. In the peculiar conditions of 
 the Indian countryside there is another way in which 
 the official staff can materially assist in reducing the 
 dead-weight of the debt. The total debt of most of 
 the cultivators includes much that they have never 
 borrowed. As I have explained, it is the habit of the 
 moneylender to add unpaid interest to the principal 
 and to take a new bond for the increased sum every 
 year and sometimes every half-year. A close examina- 
 tion into the origin and history of every debt is made 
 before a cultivator can be admitted as member of a 
 co-operative credit society. Already in many cases 
 compositions have been arranged with the money- 
 lenders, when they have been paid off by the society. 
 With an official staff as influential as I have postulated 
 these cases are likely to be much more numerous. To 
 western eyes it may seem Utopian to expect Shylock 
 to forgo some of his pound of flesh ; but in India it is 
 no uncommon experience. During our investigations 
 my officers and I have often arranged terms of com- 
 position and induced moneylenders to accept far less 
 than their nominal dues. In the Central Provinces 
 after the Famine such compositions were comprehen- 
 sively arranged as a matter of policy on the inspiration 
 of the local officials. It is not therefore extravagant 
 to suppose that a large deduction can be obtained in 
 the total indebtedness of the district, when nearly all
 
 no INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 debts are disproportionate to the sums which the 
 borrowers have actually obtained ; but a staff of high 
 quality is necessary for the purpose. If it is true that 
 moral persuasion can always compel mitigation in the 
 terms of an unconscionable bargain in Bengal, it is 
 only true when the persuader is a person of influence, 
 preferably an official, who is disinterested. 
 
 The third phase in the campaign against debt is the 
 avoidance of fresh debt by the inculcation of thrift. 
 There will always be borrowing ; but it should be 
 borrowing for use and not borrowing for consumption. 
 I have heard it asserted that a docile people like the 
 Faridpur cultivators, pre-eminently willing to follow 
 where the State leads, could be taught thrift in a 
 generation. I have no such illusion. There will 
 always be spendthrifts in Faridpur and the ordinary 
 cultivator, especially the Muhammadan, is only too 
 willing to spend when he has money in his pocket. 
 Extravagance is particularly marked in marriage enter- 
 tainments, which amongst a hospitable people is pecu- 
 liarly difficult to eradicate. On the other hand there 
 is no drink problem and no need to fight against the 
 insidious demoralization which it carries in its train. 
 In the inculcation of thrift success is more likely to be 
 achieved indirectly, by an attempt to raise the general 
 standard of living. The improvement of the home- 
 stead offers a great opportunity of diverting expendi- 
 ture from wasteful objects. The cultivators take pride 
 in their homes and could easily be induced to spend 
 money upon them, to substitute masonry for mud 
 plinths, tin roofs for thatch, timber for bamboo, and to 
 fill them with better furniture. Exhibitions of model 
 homesteads and of furniture would be very useful to
 
 INDEBTEDNESS iii 
 
 help them, if held in many centres. It is hardly 
 necessary to say that the co-operative credit staff with 
 its knowledge of every home and every family would 
 be able to give great assistance in raising the general 
 standard of living and in directing the attention of the 
 cultivators to the improvement of their homesteads 
 and furniture and of the quality of their cattle and 
 other livestock. 
 
 To sum up, of the debt incurred by cultivators in 
 Faridpur 80 per cent, could be paid off in a reasonable 
 period by the ordinary operation of land banks or 
 credit societies, 13 per cent, is more serious, but might 
 to a great extent be similarly dealt with after the 
 close examination to which Government officers could 
 subject it. The remainder, incurred by cultivators 
 with small resources to a degree out of all proportion 
 to those resources, must remain as a burden to the 
 borrowers unless some public authority should step 
 forward to take over the loan at a reasonable rate of 
 interest. Put in another way, the cultivators of Farid- 
 pur may be divided into three classes, 55 per cent, 
 entirely free of debt and making sufficient profit to 
 free most of their indebted neighbours, 39 per cent, in 
 debt but only to an extent which does not seriously 
 cripple their resources, whose debts could in a short 
 time be paid off by co-operative effort of the whole 
 body of cultivators, and only 6 per cent, whose debts 
 are far too large for any co-operative movement safely 
 to deal with and must be tackled by public authority 
 unless the cultivators are to be abandoned in the 
 grip of their moneylenders. The sum to be found 
 by public authority would not exceed ten lakhs of 
 rupees and might in liquidation be reduced con- 
 siderably below that amount.
 
 iia INDEBTEDNESS 
 
 Without an analysis by occupations of the non- 
 agricultural classes no useful purpose can be served 
 by examining the figures of their debt. Most of the 
 comments made upon the indebtedness of cultivators 
 apply no doubt also to non-cultivators ; but their 
 occupations and their conditions of life are so diverse 
 that it would need a special study of a very difficult 
 kind before any comments or any generalizations could 
 safely be ventured. The figures at least reveal the 
 dimensions of their debt and the economic condition 
 of those who have incurred it.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TAXATION 
 
 The incidence of taxation in any country is always 
 an interesting but a difficult subject of enquiry. The 
 enquirer is beset by pitfalls on all sides. Taxation 
 assumes many forms and he cannot judge their rela- 
 tive severity ; he must know the income of the country 
 and he has no accurate statistics to help him. In some 
 of the more civilized countries of the world attempts 
 have been made recently by economists or statisticians 
 to estimate the annual income, by which is meant 
 not the value of the annual production but the sum 
 of the annual incomes of every individual in the 
 State. These estimates are very much in the nature 
 of guesses, as must always be when a large part of 
 the capital is invested in corporations or in foreign 
 countries and when no return is made of lesser 
 incomes. In England, where the income-tax applies 
 to all forms of property and covers a reasonable pro- 
 portion of the people, these estimates are probably 
 more nearly correct than in countries where there is 
 no income-tax to act as a guide to the estimator ; but 
 even in England trained statisticians differ in their 
 estimates of the total income so widely that some place 
 it at ^1,600,000,000, others at ;/^ 2,400,000,000. If 
 the estimate of income is uncertain the burden of 
 taxation on that income is still more difficult to assess. 
 A large part of the revenue of every country is derived 
 
 1908 H
 
 114 TAXATION 
 
 from customs duties, of which pohtical economists have 
 as yet failed to measure the effect. There is sound 
 authority for the opinion that the buyer pays the duty, 
 sound authority for the opinion that the seller pays the 
 duty, and as sound authority for the opinion that the 
 duty is paid partly by the buyer and partly by the seller 
 in proportions varying in every country and in every 
 article of commerce. It is difficult, therefore, to esti- 
 mate the burden which such duties place upon the 
 country. Apart from customs duties all countries 
 differ in the proportions of their revenue which they 
 derive from indirect sources, such as excise, stamps 
 and commercial undertakings, and from direct taxation. 
 Any comparison, therefore, between country and 
 country must be subject to so many qualifications 
 that at the best it can be only a rough guide ; yet, 
 in judging the pitch of taxation in India, it is impossible 
 to avoid a comparison with other countries, if the 
 burden of that taxation is to be measured by the 
 ordinary reader. To say, for example, that taxation 
 amounts to sixpence in the pound conveys nothing as 
 a measure of burden to a foreigner, unless he rapidly 
 makes a mental calculation of how much in the pound 
 the taxation in his own country represents. 
 
 In Faridpur it is easy to estimate with considerable 
 accuracy the burden of taxation. If the figures of 
 income which have been compiled are at all correct, one 
 of the two difficulties which face the estimator has been 
 completely solved. The other difficulty, the revenue 
 gathered, which is not easy to calculate for any divi- 
 sion such as a county in European countries, is in 
 India made comparatively easy by the fact that the 
 district is the unit in which revenue is assessed and
 
 TAXATION 115 
 
 collected. It is only in the customs duties, which are 
 collected at the port of entry, and in widespread com- 
 mercial undertakings, such as State Railways, that 
 there is any doubt. 
 
 In Faridpur the revenue collected under various 
 heads is divided between three authorities, the greater 
 part being allocated to the Imperial or Central Govern- 
 ment and the lesser part being divided between local 
 bodies and the local police force. The details of this 
 revenue in the last year for which statistics are obtain- 
 able are given in round figures : land revenue (the 
 Imperial Land Tax) 600,000 rupees or ^40,000; 
 stamps, chiefly judicial, 780,000 rupees or ^52,000; 
 income-tax 60,000 rupees or ^4,000; excise and opium 
 180,000 rupees or ^12,000; miscellaneous 120,000 ru- 
 pees or ^8,000. The whole of this revenue, amount- 
 ing to 1,730,000 rupees or about £1 16,000, is allocated 
 to the Central Government. The local rates, which 
 are expended entirely within the district, amounted to 
 195,000 rupees or ^13,000, while the local police-tax 
 amounted to about 300,000 rupees or ^20,000. This 
 tax is assessed and collected by the village officials, 
 and spent on watch and ward within the village. 
 These figures represent the whole amount of revenue 
 collected by the central or any local authority in the 
 district. The large item of stamps reflects the extra- 
 ordinary enthusiasm of the people for civil litigation, as 
 four-fifths of this sum was collected in the shape of fees 
 upon documents used in the law courts. The land-tax 
 is a legacy of the Permanent Settlement and has never 
 been varied for over 1 20 years. When originally im- 
 posed it nominally represented 91 per cent, of the rent 
 paid by the cultivators of the soil, the remaining 9 per 
 
 H 2
 
 Ii6 TAXATION 
 
 cent, being retained by the agents who collected the 
 rent. There seems reason to believe, however, that 
 it really represented a much smaller proportion of the 
 rent and that the landowners who collected it retained a 
 much larger proportion than was intended. In any case, 
 the effect of the Permanent Settlement was to convert 
 tax-collectors into landlords and to assure to them the 
 natural increase in value which peace and growing pros- 
 perity and population would confer upon the land. Had 
 the Permanent Settlement not been effected the whole 
 of this increase would have become land-tax payable 
 to the Central Government ; it now goes to the land- 
 lords, who have thereby secured about 2,400,000 rupees 
 or ^160,000, their profits from the land having increased 
 sixfold since the Permanent Settlement was concluded, 
 while the land-tax remains at the same figure, ^40,000, 
 at which it was fixed 120 years ago. The local rates 
 are imposed by the local authority and are assessed 
 upon the rent paid by the cultivating classes, or in the 
 two small towns upon property. They are very light, 
 and represent to the cultivator an income-tax of less 
 than I per cent, (about 0-3 per cent.) and to the 
 landlord an income-tax of about 3 per cent. In the 
 small towns the property-tax is assessed very capri- 
 ciously and amounts in the average to if rupees or 
 2S. per head of the population, equivalent to an income- 
 tax of about 2 per cent, or less. The local police-rate, 
 which is not collected in the towns, is in effect an 
 income-tax on every family throughout the rest of the 
 district. It is levied very unevenly, but it appears to 
 represent in the average a tax of 0-3 per cent, upon 
 income. 
 
 The other sources of revenue of trovernment in
 
 TAXATION 
 
 117 
 
 India are all indirect. They are either customs and 
 salt duties, or the profits of State railways and of com- 
 mercial departments such as forests and the post office. 
 There is no means of estimating what burden they 
 impose upon different parts of the country. In calcu- 
 lating" what portion of them is borne by the district of 
 Faridpur it is fairest to assume that they press equally 
 upon every family in India. In the total they amount 
 to a sum of 2s. /^\d. per head of the population. 
 
 We are now in a position to examine the total 
 taxation borne by the people of Faridpur : 
 
 
 
 
 
 r'er head of 
 
 population. 
 
 Paid to the Central Government : s. d. 
 
 Customs duties and excise 17 
 
 Salt 
 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 Profits and State Railways 
 
 
 
 
 6i 
 
 Miscellaneous profits and receipts 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 Stamps 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Income-tax .... 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 "2 
 
 Land-tax . . . ■ . 
 
 
 
 
 A\ 
 
 Local Rates 
 
 
 
 
 ^\ 
 
 Village Taxation .... 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Total 
 
 3 8i 
 
 The total is really a little less ; but owing to the 
 absence of detailed figures, I have not been able to 
 separate excise from customs duties. The yield of 
 excise and opium is very small (only \\d. per head of 
 the population) in an abstinent district like Faridpur, 
 much smaller indeed than in India as a whole. 
 
 It may be assumed that the revenue from all sources 
 amounts in Faridpur to about 33". 6d. (Rs. 2 A. 10) per 
 head of the population. A calculation on the same 
 basis shows that the revenue demand in Bengal is only 
 half what it is in any other province in India, although
 
 ii8 TAXATION 
 
 in all probability the income per head of population is 
 greater than in any other province. The economic 
 statistics which have been reviewed reveal an average 
 income per head of 52 rupees or £2, 9s. in the district. 
 The total revenue demand is, therefore, about 5 per 
 cent, or a shilling in the pound. 
 
 The Bengali delights to compare his country with 
 England in all matters economic, although in truth 
 there is no country in the world with which Bengal 
 is less suitable for comparison. Great Britain is so 
 preponderantly an industrial country that only one- 
 seventh of the population is dependent upon the land 
 for a livelihood ; in Bengal the industrial popula- 
 tion is insignificant and four-fifths of the population 
 are directly supported by the land. In Great Britain 
 five out of every six persons live in towns larger than 
 any town in Faridpur, whereas in Faridpur only three 
 persons in a hundred live in towns at all, and those 
 towns are in everything except the name merely over- 
 grown villages. Nevertheless the comparison should 
 be made, as it will serve to exhibit more clearly than 
 any other means the incidence of revenue in Bengal. 
 The comparison is the more valuable because the pro- 
 portion of revenue derived from tax and non-tax 
 sources is approximately the same, thus : 
 
 Percentage of total revenue derived from 
 
 Customs c-t u ci Direct 
 
 J . Stamps. Profits, 
 
 and excise. ^ taxation. 
 
 Great Britain .38 5 18 39 
 
 India ... 36 10 14 40 
 
 In the comparison I have adopted as the total 
 income of Great Britain the latest estimate of the best
 
 TAXATION 119 
 
 statisticians, ^2,000,000,000, or ^45 per head of the 
 population. The comparison is as follows : 
 
 Great Britain. Faridpur. 
 £ s. d. £ s. d. 
 
 Total revenue of the central govern- 
 
 
 
 
 ment (tax and non-tax) per head 
 
 
 
 
 of population .... 
 
 3 17 
 
 3 
 
 4i 
 
 Total revenue (tax) of the local 
 
 
 
 
 authorities per head of population 
 
 300 
 
 
 3l 
 
 Income per head of population 
 
 45 
 
 3 9 
 
 
 
 Incidence of revenue upon income : 
 
 
 
 
 Central revenue 
 
 8^ per cent. 
 
 8iper 
 
 cent. 
 
 Local „ ... 
 
 6| „ „ 
 
 1 
 4 ^' 
 
 )) 
 
 Total „ ... 
 
 154 'J >■> 
 
 8| „ 
 
 J) 
 
 It is more profitable to compare an agricultural 
 district like Faridpur with the agricultural countries 
 of the civilized world. It is impossible, however, to 
 obtain sufficient information to complete the compari- 
 son. Most of the reference books which are obtainable 
 give the figures of revenue without sufficient explana- 
 tion, and many omit the details of local taxation alto- 
 gether. The burden of the revenue upon the average 
 income is, however, the real criterion. Unfortunately, 
 no estimate of the total or average income in any 
 of these countries is available. All that it is possible 
 to say is that it is universally admitted that the average 
 income in Great Britain is greater than in any of the 
 countries selected for comparison and very much 
 greater than in most of them. 
 
 The following table has been compiled from the 
 latest statistics available for the period before the war. 
 The figures for the revenues of the central govern- 
 ments all refer to the financial year preceding the 
 outbreak of the war (19 13-14). The figures for the 
 revenues of the local authorities refer to that year
 
 I20 
 
 TAXATION 
 
 o o 
 
 <V ro Tl- ■+ vC f^ ■* 
 
 CJ i5 
 
 o 
 
 tc 
 
 <D 
 
 ro ►- 'O N <0 >0 
 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 W fO ►« M l-i N 
 
 <u 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 3 
 
 <v 
 
 
 C 
 
 
 Cu 
 
 
 a. 
 
 (r> « 
 
 <J M 
 
 r~ On c^co t^^ 
 
 P 
 O 
 C/3 
 
 2-? 
 
 w 
 
 i^vo w T^ Tj- •* 
 
 rO PO lO lo ■* ■* 
 
 O 
 
 ^s 
 
 o o o o o o 
 
 <4? <0 fO •<* Tf U-) M 
 
 00 
 
 
 S O 3 
 
 o o o o o o 
 
 <4{ w M o M N 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 _-l 
 
 
 QJ 
 
 Cj 
 
 >» 
 
 > 
 
 Li 
 
 
 
 
 
 C 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 
 o 
 
 3 
 
 '^ o o o o o o 
 
 M^ -^ M N CJ ro 1-1 
 
 
 C 
 
 3 
 O 
 
 U 
 
 ri^ HH C-H C/) HM I , 
 
 a. 
 
 Pt,
 
 TAXATION 121 
 
 (Denmark, Japan) or the year previous (Italy, Sweden, 
 Holland) or the year 1910 (France). The revenues 
 of the central governments have been so distributed 
 under the four heads as to present as uniform a classi- 
 fication and as clean a division as the data and the 
 diverse practice of the several countries permit. 
 
 The astonishing feature about this comparison is 
 the extraordinarily low rate of revenue in India. 
 If it be urged that a high revenue and even a rela- 
 tively high revenue in European countries is really 
 a smaller burden upon the people owing to their larger 
 resources than a low revenue in Asiatic countries, the 
 case of Japan still remains to be explained. The rate 
 of revenue in Japan is nine times as large as the 
 rate in Bengal, but he would be a bold man who dared 
 assert that the resources of the two countries bear 
 a like proportion. There seems sound reason to believe 
 that the income of a country district in Japan is really 
 less and not more than the income of a district of 
 Eastern Bengal, as wages appear in every occupation 
 to be at a lower level. Civilized government is not 
 a cheap thing, and the recognized law is that the 
 poorer the country the greater the cost of its govern- 
 ment. India is an amazing exception. It will be 
 observed that Bengal, as illustrated by the figures 
 collected for the district of Faridpur, is incontestably 
 the most lightly taxed of civilized countries in the 
 world. It 'is probable that there is no other in which 
 the burden of taxation is not twice or three times as 
 great as it is in Bengal. If it be urged that Faridpur 
 is an exceptionally prosperous district and no guide to 
 the conditions in the rest of Bengal, it may at once be 
 answered that, on the contrary, it is the poorest district
 
 122 TAXATION 
 
 agriculturally in the whole of Eastern Bengal and that 
 the cultivators and the general population of all the 
 neighbouring districts on the south, east and west are 
 certainly better off. Without a complete investigation 
 this statement is not capable of absolute proof; but 
 it is noteworthy that Bakarganj, the district on the 
 south, which has the same proportion of the popula- 
 tion dependent upon agriculture for a livelihood, pro- 
 duces crops which are twice as valuable to sustain a 
 population which is very little more. 
 
 Cheap government is not necessarily good govern- 
 ment, but it is certain that the people of Bengal, 
 although they pay only one-half or one-third of the 
 people of other countries for their government, get 
 very little less in return. To any unprejudiced student 
 of conditions in Europe and conditions in India it 
 must be clear that any weakness or inefficiency in the 
 administration of India is exclusively in local adminis- 
 tration. There is not a single country in Europe 
 nor a civilized country in Asia which does not pay far 
 more heavily than India for its central government 
 and which obtains in return superior service. The 
 Indian bureaucracy has supplied India with cheaper 
 railway communications than any possessed by Euro- 
 pean countries, has provided for her the greatest 
 irrigation works in the world, has created a judicial 
 system which will bear comparison for fairness and 
 expedition with any system elsewhere, has maintained 
 order and the security of life and property in the most 
 unlikely conditions, has grappled successfully with 
 widespread failure of crops, the most difficult problem 
 which any government has ever been called upon to 
 face, and has attempted of late years the stupendous
 
 TAXATION 123 
 
 labour of providing an ignorant and densely-populated 
 country with a modern system of education and a 
 modern system of sanitation. It has done all this at 
 a cost which is an infinitely lighter burden upon the 
 resources of a poor country than any of the govern- 
 ments in Europe has placed upon the resources of 
 a rich country. 
 
 It is only when the eyes are turned upon local 
 administration that the backwardness of India is 
 apparent in comparison with Europe. Apart from 
 the hardly-civilized nations in the Balkans or deca- 
 dent countries like Spain and Portugal, the states of 
 Europe provide for all their inhabitants elementary 
 education, insist upon effective sanitation, supply good 
 roads and means of communication, good lighting, and 
 the numerous other material concomitants of modern 
 civilization. In most, if not in all, countries this is 
 done at the expense of local authorities by means 
 of taxation which is neither imposed nor handled by 
 the central government. It has not always or usually 
 been done at the wish of the inhabitants or at the 
 instance of the local authorities, but it has generally 
 to a great extent and always to some extent been 
 done at the direction of the central government 
 through the agency of the local authorities. For this 
 purpose the local authorities have provided them- 
 selves or have been provided with ample funds. An 
 examination of the figures already given will show 
 that none of the more progressive countries in Europe 
 raises less than a quarter of its revenue by direct 
 taxation through local authorities for expenditure upon 
 local needs. The figures given for Faridpur will show, 
 on the other hand, that the sums raised in Bengal by
 
 134 TAXATION 
 
 the local authorities or for local needs are insignifi- 
 cant and do not amount to a tenth part of the total 
 revenue of the country. With such inadequate means 
 it is impossible that local administration can bear any 
 comparison with local administration in Europe. 
 
 It would perhaps be unfair to select for more detailed 
 comparison any of the richest and foremost countries in 
 Europe — Great Britain, Germany, or France — but it 
 will not be at all unfair to take Italy, where the circum- 
 stances and character of the people are not very dis- 
 similar from those in Bengal, where almost as large 
 a proportion of the inhabitants is supported by agri- 
 culture and where the poverty of the country has 
 always been a great obstacle to the efficiency of its 
 government. Moreover in the matter of modern 
 government Italy starts with no great advantage in 
 the point of time over India. If the condition of India 
 until the middle of the nineteenth century was chaotic, 
 the condition of Italy at the same period was even more 
 chaotic ; if modern administration may be said to start 
 in India after the Mutiny of 1857, modern administra- 
 tion in Italy may with equal justice be said to start 
 after the reunion in 1859. The two countries are 
 therefore eminently fit for comparison. 
 
 It so happens that a very competent enquirer pub- 
 lished lately an analysis of income and taxation in 
 a typical Italian village in an agricultural part of the 
 country. He did not estimate the sum of the annual 
 incomes of all the villagers, but he estimated the value 
 of the total agricultural produce and he calculated the 
 amount of taxation imposed by the central and local 
 governments and by the village council. As regards 
 the taxation of the central government he confined
 
 TAXATION 125 
 
 himself to the land-tax, which appears to represent 
 only 10 per cent, of the revenue raised by the central 
 government in Italy. In writing an official report upon 
 the preparation of a Record of Rights in the district 
 of Bakarganj, adjacent to Faridpur, I had occasion to 
 use this analysis for the purpose of comparison. 
 Bakarganj came very well out of the comparison, the 
 net income of the cultivator being equal to that of 
 the Italian cultivator who pays six times as much in 
 taxes. The writer of the article remarked of life 
 in the Italian village: 'the people are vegetarians, 
 not from choice but from necessity. They cannot 
 afford to eat meat nor even eggs ; they cannot afford 
 to eat wheat bread but eat maize porridge and maize 
 bread, vegetables and fruit, and what the cow pro- 
 duces.' This is for all practical purposes a description 
 of the food of the people of Faridpur without the 
 comfortable addition of fish in abundance to the daily 
 diet. The houses of the Italian peasants are, no doubt, 
 stronger, but that is due to the greater severity of 
 the climate ; they do not contain as much floor space, 
 although they are much better furnished. The clothes 
 of the peasant are made of better cloth and are far 
 less scanty, but this again is due to the difference 
 of climate ; they must be warmer or the peasant will 
 perish, but in return he has to content himself with 
 one or two suits. The writer remarks that the 
 Italian population has scarcely any money at all 
 for such indulgences as jewellery and spends very 
 much less upon marriages and similar domestic cere- 
 monies. On a close comparison of taxation in the 
 Italian village with taxation In the Bakarganj village, 
 it appeared that while the Italian land-tax was three
 
 126 TAXATION 
 
 times as large, the local authority took twice as much, 
 and the village council took seventeen times as much 
 from the Italian peasant as from the Bakarganj peasant. 
 In other words, what the Bengal peasant spends on 
 marriages and jewellery, the Italian peasant is com- 
 pelled by his government to spend on roads and 
 lighting, on sanitation, on a good water supply, on 
 medical attendance and on education. The economic 
 enquiry in Faridpur has enabled even closer com- 
 parison to be made of the burden of taxation in both 
 countries ; but the results are very much the same. 
 The Italian peasant surrenders one-third of the pro- 
 duce of the soil in land-tax or in local and village 
 taxation ; the Faridpur peasant less than one-twentieth. 
 It is true that he has to pay in addition rent to his 
 private landlord ; but this amounts to less than a tenth 
 of the produce of the soil and in any case does not 
 reach the public exchequer. 
 
 Not all of this disproportion in the burden of taxation 
 is due to the acquisition of those material benefits 
 which are the principal feature of western civilization. 
 It is clear that the system of administration in Italy 
 is far more expensive than in India and, if a foreigner 
 may judge, it is considerably less efficient. Railways 
 in Italy are no more numerous and are much worse 
 managed than they are in India, while light lines 
 to serve village needs, such as are common in the 
 best-governed European countries, are conspicuous by 
 their absence in Italy. Civil justice is dilatory, criminal 
 administration admittedly inefficient, and the police 
 bear no very high reputation. But in the provision 
 of local conveniences Italy is immeasurably more 
 advanced. It is true that Faridpur is backward even
 
 TAXATION 127 
 
 for Bengal. Trunk roads are few and bad, there are 
 no village roads of any sort although they are urgently 
 wanted ; doctors are fewer and less well qualified than 
 in neighbouring districts, although fever and other 
 diseases have taken such a heavy toll in some parts of 
 the district as to reduce the population materially ; 
 finally, in the matter of education and its extension 
 into the villages and amongst the cultivators, Faridpur 
 appears to be the most backward district in Eastern 
 Bengal. It is only necessary, however, to compare 
 the conveniences supplied to every agricultural village 
 in Italy with the conveniences supplied to even the 
 best-managed villages in Faridpur to see that in the 
 matter of local administration there is much room for 
 improvement ; in truth, in local administration every 
 village in Italy is better managed than even the head- 
 quarters town in Faridpur. The Italian village has 
 good roads and good lighting, good water and efficient 
 sanitation. All children, both boys and girls, receive 
 elementary education. A doctor and a midwife are 
 provided free for the benefit of the villagers. 
 
 There is an opinion, which is generally held in 
 England and by the educated class in India and has 
 been emphasized in some recent books on India by 
 people insufficiently informed of the facts, that India 
 as a whole and in every part is overtaxed. This view 
 will not bear a minute's scrutiny in Faridpur in the 
 light of the information which has been so laboriously 
 gathered. The truth is that Bengal at least is more 
 lightly taxed than any other civilized country in the 
 world ; and not only more lightly taxed, but far more 
 lightly taxed. This comparison with one of the civilized 
 countries in Europe serves to bring out the conditions
 
 128 TAXATION 
 
 by which taxation has been kept so low. It is due 
 certainly in part to extreme economy and extreme 
 efficiency in the central government, but it is also 
 due to great neglect in local administration. Such 
 neglect is in great measure the result of the circum- 
 stances of British rule in India. It is impossible for 
 alien rulers to force material benefits upon a people 
 which has not learnt to desire them, unless they 
 can be introduced without an)- heavy increase in taxa- 
 tion. There would undoubtedly be grave discontent in 
 every Faridpur village if village taxation were in- 
 creased at one bound to the Italian level, even though 
 the villager obtained in return all and more than all 
 the material benefits which the Italian villager has 
 secured. There is no doubt, however, that he would 
 be prepared to pay without grumbling some increase 
 in taxation if he could obtain in return some of the 
 more obvious advantages, such as roads, good water, 
 or medical attendance. The chief obstacle to an 
 increase in village taxation has hitherto been the 
 opposition of the central government owing to its 
 ignorance of the incidence of existing taxation upon 
 the income of the people. Although all governments 
 in India have known for some time that India, and 
 more especially Bengal, bears a very light burden of 
 taxation, yet they have never had in their possession 
 any accurate or detailed statistics wath which to measure 
 and to demonstrate its incidence. On the other hand, 
 a considerable body of Indian opinion and a consider- 
 able number of uninstructed Englishmen have urged 
 the view in and out of season that taxation in India 
 is excessive and a disproportionate drain upon the 
 resources of the people. Unless proof were available
 
 TAXATION 129 
 
 of the real incidence of taxation it was difficult in the 
 face of such views held by influential parties to attempt 
 any increase in local burdens. It was easier to leave 
 the villager in the nakedness, which he hardly dis- 
 cerned, than to clothe him with modern conveniences 
 at the risk of an agitation. Moreover in the absence 
 of clear proof there was always the uncomfortable 
 possibility that the pessimists might be right and the 
 resources of the villagers so small as to make even the 
 existing taxation excessive. The truth is that in Bengal 
 not only is all taxation exceptionally light, but local 
 taxation in particular is an insignificant burden upon 
 the resources of the people, that the provision of local 
 conveniences and material benefits is in consequence 
 very inadequate, but that it cannot be improved unless 
 larger sums are placed at the disposal of the local 
 authorities. 
 
 The existing local taxation amounts in its yield to 
 the local authorities to a rate of rather over a penny 
 in the pound or about | per cent, on the total income 
 of the population of the district. The amount actually 
 paid by the taxpayers is probably double this rate 
 owing to the extortion, corruption and waste which 
 accompany the existing methods of assessment. One- 
 sixth of the population is omitted from assessment, and 
 the assessment upon the remainder is uneven and 
 capricious. In truth, the present resources of the local 
 authorities could be doubled by a reform in assessment 
 and collection without increasing the rate at which the 
 present taxes are collected. 
 
 The local rates are of two kinds, collected and 
 assessed by different agencies and devoted to different 
 objects, the district rate which is known as the Road and
 
 1 30 TAXATION 
 
 Public Works Cess, and the village rate which is known 
 as the Chokidari Tax. The district rate is levied 
 upon the agricultural classes only, although the ser- 
 vices upon which it is spent, roads, water-supply and 
 the like, equally benefit the non-agricultural classes. 
 It is a tax of 6 per cent, assessed upon rent, half being 
 paid by the landlord and half by the tenant. In other 
 words, it is intended that the cultivator should pay 
 a penny, the landlord a penny, and that the local 
 authority should receive twopence, the landlord paying 
 in the whole sum after gathering the tenants' penny 
 from his tenants. In actual practice, however, the 
 landlords habitually collect the whole tax from the 
 cultivator, not only the amount which he ought to 
 pay, but the amount also which they ought to pay ; 
 and they very often collect more than this amount 
 and obtain a profit on the transaction. The assess- 
 ment of the rate is a very cumbersome and costly 
 process. The amount which each tenant or cultivator 
 pays is proportionate to his rent and is therefore col- 
 lected automatically by the landlord ; but the amount 
 which each landlord ought to pay is a lengthy calcula- 
 tion, which is made by the local authorities only at 
 long intervals. In the intervening periods additional 
 taxation due from increase in rent (which is a constant 
 feature in Bengal) goes to the pocket of the landlord 
 and not to the local authority. 
 
 The chief objection to the rate is, however, the 
 exemption of the non-agricultural classes, weavers, 
 fishermen, labourers, clerks, shopkeepers, and the like. 
 There can be no reason for exempting these classes 
 from payment, for such benefits as the activities of 
 the local authority confer upon the villagers are shared
 
 TAXATION 131 
 
 equally by all, and the tax is in no respect used to 
 help agriculture alone or to further only the interests 
 of the cultivators. Careful enquiries were made into 
 the amount which the cultivator actually pays, and it 
 was found that it represented a penny in the pound 
 upon his income. If the existing rate upon rent were 
 converted into a penny in the pound upon income and 
 applied to all non-agricultural as well as to all agri- 
 cultural classes, the yield would be 400,000 rupees, or 
 about three times as much as at present, the cultivator 
 would pay no more than he does at present, the land- 
 lord would not escape or make a profit, and the 
 non-cultivator would pay equally with the cultivator 
 and would not obtain the benefits conferred by local 
 administration for nothing. 
 
 The chokidari tax, or village rate, is assessed and 
 collected in an entirely different manner. It is assessed 
 in a rough and ready fashion by the headman of 
 each village as a tax upon income with a maximum 
 limit, and is spent upon the provision of village 
 police. The total yield in Faridpur is equivalent to 
 less than a penny in the pound upon income (0-3 per 
 cent), but the assessment is very capricious. Upon 
 an investigation, which was most carefully made, of 
 the amount paid by each family, and a comparison 
 with the income of that family, it appears that 
 generally speaking the poorer classes pay double as 
 much as the richer classes, and too many of the latter 
 escape altogether. The number of families in really 
 good circumstances who escape too lightly or alto- 
 gether was astonishing, especially amongst Hindus, 
 while on the other hand at least half of the families 
 who were found to be living in a condition very little 
 
 I 2
 
 132 TAXATION 
 
 removed from actual want were assessed to the rate. 
 Were the average tax now reaHzed from the poorer 
 half of the population (| per cent.) applied to the 
 richer half and no exemptions permitted, the yield 
 would be about 64 per cent, more than at present, 
 while the rate on the poorest families would be con- 
 siderably reduced. 
 
 During our economic investigations the incidence of 
 local taxation was examined most carefully. The 
 amount paid by each individual family was compared 
 with the income of the family. It is reasonable to 
 assume that the information which was collected can 
 be trusted. The substance of that information is that 
 the burden is not equally borne by all sections of the 
 community, that all non-agricultural families and the 
 richer cultivators escape too lightly, and that the local 
 authorities receive less than half of w^hat has been 
 paid. The total yield to the local authorities is about 
 four lakhs of rupees, although the total amount paid 
 on account of the two taxes appears to be about eight 
 lakhs of rupees. A rate of i per cent, upon income, 
 or 2^d. in the pound, appears to be the scale upon 
 which the poorer half of the cultivators is actually (not 
 nominally) taxed. If the road cess were abolished and 
 the chokidari tax were converted into a local tax upon 
 income at this rate and applied to all classes of the 
 community, the yield in Faridpur would be over ten 
 lakhs of rupees or 2~ times the existing yield. It 
 will be observed that the increase w^ould be obtained 
 without alteration in the scale on which the poorer 
 cultivators are at present taxed ; but entirely by 
 assessing the richer cultivators and all non-cultivators 
 at the same scale.
 
 TAXATION 133 
 
 I venture to make these suggestions because It is 
 clear that greater expenditure on local administration 
 will soon in Bengal become an urgent necessity. 
 Before fresh taxation is proposed or considered, it is 
 desirable that the incidence, yield and possibilities of 
 existing rates of taxation should be accurately measured. 
 Were these suggestions adopted, the cess upon rent 
 abolished and the chokidari tax converted into a 
 I per cent, tax upon all incomes, no new machinery 
 for collection would need to be devised. The new 
 tax would be collected, as is the chokidari tax, by 
 the headmen of the villages, who do their work as well 
 as any work of this kind is done in Bengal and much 
 better than the landlords. There can indeed be no 
 dispute that the headman is the most efficient agency 
 for the collection of local rates. The assessment of 
 these rates is an entirely different matter, which should 
 not be left to the headman. It is true that the head- 
 man at present assesses the chokidari tax, but Table IV 
 appended to these pages will show how capriciously 
 he makes the assessment. He has sufficient local 
 knowledge for the purpose, but is not sufficiently inde- 
 pendent of local influences. It will not be disputed 
 perhaps that to have made detailed investigations into 
 the income of nearly 350,000 families warrants a claim 
 to some knowledge of the difficulty of the task. I have 
 no hesitation in saying that investigations into income 
 are very easy to conduct in the simple circumstances 
 of an Indian village. The value of the results depends 
 chiefly upon the fairness of the investigator. It is 
 essential that officers of superior position ^ should be 
 
 ^ In our investigations members of the Subordinate Executive 
 Service and Settlement Kanungos were employed.
 
 134 TAXATION 
 
 employed who would be certain to combine the requi- 
 site knowledge and intelligence with the requisite 
 freedom from local influences. It is the single mind 
 w^hich is most needed to make an accurate estimation, 
 as it is in truth impossible for a man of ordinary intelli- 
 gence to make any serious error in estimating the income 
 of the ordinary family. In nine out of every ten families 
 the intelligent observer can in a very short time make 
 a guess which will be nearly accurate of the income of 
 each family. It is only in the incomes of the com- 
 paratively rare misers or spendthrifts that any mistake 
 is likely to be made, and the assessor would always 
 have the headman and the principal villagers at hand 
 to warn him. Taxation on the orross income of the 
 family is, however, unequal in any community and is 
 in Bengal very unequal owing to the great differences 
 in the size of the family. A family which contains 
 several young children cannot be assessed with fair- 
 ness in the same manner as a family which consists 
 entirel)' of adults, although the income of both may be 
 the same. In some villages the headman, in assessing 
 the chokidari tax, solved this difficulty by dividing the 
 income by the number of persons whom it supported 
 and arriving at an income per head. This was cer- 
 tainly a fairer means of assessing the tax, which by 
 a natural development might be converted into an 
 ideal method. The cost of maintenance of a woman 
 or a young child is only half the cost of maintenance 
 of a male of fifteen years or more. If each woman or 
 young child were counted as only half a person in the 
 calculation of the income per head, the result would 
 be to obtain an artificial income per head of the popu- 
 lation which would roughly correspond in every family
 
 TAXATION 135 
 
 to the amount per head available for expenditure. 
 A tax upon this artificial income per head, deduced 
 as it would be from the actual income of the family 
 and its actual constitution, would equalize the burden 
 of the rate in a way which no other system can 
 possibly attempt. In the towns of western countries, 
 where no one knows anything about his neighbour's 
 business, such a system of taxation would probably be 
 impossible ; but in an Indian village, where every man 
 knows the affairs of his neighbours almost as well as 
 his own, so little can be hidden that an intelligent 
 officer employing this system could, without any great 
 difficulty, assess the proportions of the tax so that it 
 would impose an equal burden upon every family in 
 the village. 
 
 The cost of such an assessment by government 
 officers of the class indicated would not be prohibitive, 
 nor in fact need it be more than the cost of the 
 assessment as made at present. It has been found 
 that enormous sums are spent in revaluing a district 
 under the present system for the purpose of the cess 
 upon rent. The amount spent on such revaluations 
 spread over every year during which they are in 
 force would suffice to maintain a staff of a superior 
 erade of officials able to assess the whole district on 
 a basis of income once in every five years. Two 
 advantages would be certain to accrue, an increase in 
 the sum placed at the disposal of the local authorities, 
 which would be more than twice as large as the sum 
 which they have now at their disposal, and an equal 
 distribution of the burden over all classes of the 
 community. These advantages are worth securing, 
 the more so that they do not involve any heavier
 
 136 TAXATION 
 
 burden upon the poorer classes. The taxation of 
 I per cent, on income is not only very small in itself, 
 but is also very considerably less than the amount 
 paid for purposes of local administration by the in- 
 habitants of the two small towns in the district. They 
 are constituted as municipalities under the Municipal 
 Act and for the upkeep of roads, lighting and con- 
 servancy they levy a property tax. It is a common- 
 place that this tax is most unequally assessed. The 
 richer and professional classes generally escape with 
 a very light assessment, the poorer and trading classes 
 making up the deficiency. In the average the taxation 
 in the two towns appear, as far as can be judged, to be 
 equivalent to an income-tax of 2| per cent, or dd. 
 in the pound upon income. This is borne by the 
 inhabitants without any grumbling, although it is, as 
 will be observed, three times as heavy as the taxation 
 in force in the rural parts of the district. 
 
 There can be no question that a universal income- 
 tax, which embraces every income and varies with the 
 size of the family, is the ideal form of taxation for any 
 country. It has two supreme fiscal merits in that it is 
 certain in its demand and in its yield and that it keeps 
 pace with every change in the value of money. When 
 prices are rising, its yield automatically increases, thus 
 avoiding the necessity of disturbing the peace by 
 changes in the method or the rate of existing taxation. 
 It has also one great political merit in that it exhibits 
 the taxable capacity of the country in the most 
 accurate and unmistakable way. It reveals the 
 national income and converts a calculation of the 
 burden of taxation into a simple sum in proportion. 
 In a country like India which is ruled by an alien
 
 TAXATION 137 
 
 government, whose fiscal policy dare not admit an 
 error and whose every action is scrutinized by cold 
 and critical eyes, these merits have an altogether 
 exceptional value. The most pressing need of Indian 
 administration in these days is accurate economic 
 information in such a form that while it will enable 
 all measures to be framed on a basis of ascertained 
 fact, it will also be available to rob the critic of his 
 sentimental stock-in-trade. Such information is best 
 supplied by the univeral income-tax. To establish a 
 universal income-tax is an undertaking from which 
 the strongest governments have quailed. The Bengal 
 administrator is happy in that it is already in existence, 
 waiting only for development and modification to 
 become an ideal fiscal instrument. 
 
 The collection of the economic information of which 
 these pages attempt to give an analysis was not, 
 however, undertaken for the purpose of advancing 
 theory or suggesting reform. It was an attempt to 
 tabulate the economic resources of the district. It 
 may be as well to conclude with a brief summary of 
 the broad results. If the statistics are trustworthy, 
 the average income per head in the district of Faridpur 
 is 52 rupees, the average debt 11 rupees and the 
 average taxation 2} rupees. As the population of 
 the district was 2,122,000 at the census of 191 1, the 
 total income of the inhabitants of the district would 
 be 1 1 and their total debt 2| crores of rupees.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ABSTRACT OF THE RULES AND INSTRUCTIONS 
 IN ACCORDANCE WITH WHICH THE ECONO- 
 MIC INFORMATION WAS GATHERED, RE- 
 CORDED AND TABULATED 
 
 I. RULES 
 
 Forms nos. i8o and i8i are the same form with headings 
 suitable for the different classes, no. i8o for the cultivating 
 classes and no. iHi for the non-cultivating classes. Every 
 family inhabiting a homestead in the village and with a separate 
 ' mess ' will be shown separately in one or other of these 
 forms, but not in both. It is necessary to understand clearly 
 the difference between the two parts. In no. i8o will be 
 included : 
 
 (i) All who cultivate land themselves or by their family or 
 servants and whose main dependence is upon the produce of 
 the land. 
 
 (2) All who live by agricultural labour. 
 
 In no. 181 will be included all who live by service or 
 industry or on the rents of tenants. 
 
 Note i. — The widow of a cultivator, who has leased out 
 her lands on a produce rent during the minority of her children, 
 will be included in no. 180. 
 
 Note 2. — A cultivator who is also a village watchman or 
 a messenger of his landlord will be shown in no. 180. A 
 cultivating fisherman or weaver will be included in no. 180 or 
 no. 181 according as the bulk of his income is derived from 
 the land or from fishing and weaving. 
 
 Note 3. — A petty landlord of the respectable classes who 
 subsists on the produce rents of his tenants will be shown 
 in no. 181.
 
 GATHERING OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION 139 
 
 The following instructions in the filling up of the two forms 
 should be carefully read : 
 
 No. 180. Cultivating classes. 
 
 If two families live in the same homestead but in separate 
 'mess' (i.e. taking their meals apart), there should be two 
 separate entries with sub-numbers. 
 Population (cols. 2-6). 
 
 These must be accurate, showing the numbers of the 
 family at home. Members employed elsewhere and not 
 usually living at home should not be included, but temporary 
 absentees should. 
 
 Religion and caste (col. 7). 
 
 Write ' Christian ' or Muhammadan,but instead of Hindu 
 write the caste, ' Brahmin,' ' Kayastha,' &c. 
 Sale of crops (col. 8). 
 
 A cultivator keeps a large amount of his food crops for 
 the consumption of the family during the year and sells the 
 remainder. The amount which he obtains annually by such 
 sales only should be shown here. Where land is held at 
 a produce rent, the landlord's share of the crop should be 
 excluded. The proceeds of the sale of all crops, rice, jute, 
 sugar-cane, thatching grass, reeds, tobacco, &c., should be 
 totalled and entered here. 
 Sale of bye-products (col. 9), 
 
 Bye-products are chiefly straw and paddy-huskings. The 
 amount obtained by sale of these should be shown here. 
 Local markets should be watched to see if sale of straw and 
 huskings is prevalent. 
 
 Sale of dairy produce (col. 10). 
 
 Milk, eggs, butter, cheese, &c. 
 Sale of garden produce (col. 11). 
 
 Receipts from all kinds of vegetables together with the 
 produce of fruit-bearing trees as shown in cols. 10-17 of the 
 Homestead Statement and the value of bamboos annually 
 sold should be added together and shown here. It is clear 
 that where there is a large garden, there will usually be 
 a corresponding entry in this column. 
 
 ■^
 
 I40 RULES RELATING TO THE 
 
 Sale of live-stock (col. 12). 
 
 Calves, foals, fowls, chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep, goats. 
 The average annual amount obtained by sale of these should 
 be shown here. 
 
 Rent of under-tenants (col. 13). 
 
 When a cultivator sublets some of his land for a money- 
 rent, the amount will be entered here. If he sublets it at 
 a produce rent and actually takes his share of the crop, it will 
 not be entered, as he has either retained the crop for the 
 subsistence of his family or has sold it, when it is included in 
 col. 8. If, however, the crop is jute or a similar crop, the 
 landlord's share is often sold or valued, and the tenant hands 
 over not the produce but the money equivalent. In such 
 cases the money equivalent will be entered here. 
 
 Sale of fish (col. 14). 
 
 Members of a cultivator's family often supplement their 
 earnings by catching fish in a small way. (Fishermen of the 
 fishing castes who live by fishing will be entered in no. 181.) 
 
 Carting (col. 15). 
 
 Where there are roads, cultivators may earn large sums 
 annually by plying their carts, cattle, or pack-ponies for hire. 
 An adequate allowance for fodder should be deducted and 
 only the profit shown here. 
 
 Hire of cattle (col. 16). 
 
 Cultivators with cattle to spare let them out to less 
 fortunate men for ploughing, carting, &c. 
 
 Agricultural labour (cols. 17 and 18). 
 
 Where one or more male adults in the same ' mess ' 
 labour on hire in the fields of others, their numbers will be 
 entered in col. 17. If they receive a share of the crop as 
 payment for their labour, the word ' kind ' only will be entered 
 in col. 18; if they receive cash, the annual amount earned by 
 all. If they go to other districts to labour, the name of the 
 district should be noted. Where labour is merely exchanged, 
 there will be no entry. Agricultural labour may be cither
 
 GATHERING OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION 141 
 
 ploughing, sowing, weeding, or reaping, sugar pressing or 
 steeping jute, &c. 
 
 Other kinds of unskilled labour (cols. 19 and 20). 
 
 This refers to labour on roads, or as a porter (coolie), 
 bricklayer, &c. 
 
 Industries and service (cols. 21-3). 
 
 Certain small industries, such as paddy-husking or mat- 
 weaving, are carried on by men and women. In such cases 
 enter 'paddy-husking', &c., in col. 21 and the receipts in 
 col. 23. Enter similarly the nature and profits of trading ; 
 probably petty moneylending will be the commonest case. 
 
 Service is more frequent. Thus the cultivator, his brothers, 
 or his sons may serve as messengers of the landlord or the 
 State, as village watchmen, as watchmen of shopkeepers and 
 moneylenders, or as servants, or their womenkind may serve 
 as maid-servants of the respectable classes. Enter in col. 21 
 * watchman ', * servant ', ' maid-servant \ &c., and the total 
 amount of annual earnings in col. 22 or 23, as the case may 
 be. If they get food as well as money wages enter ' Rs. 16 
 and food ', &c. 
 
 Contributions of absent earning members (cols. 24 and 25). 
 These columns deal with servants of the State, the rail- 
 ways, steamers, or private persons, who live away from their 
 homes but maintain the family at home by remitting monthly 
 contributions. Col. 25 will show the total amount sent home 
 annually. If it varies, the amount sent home last year will 
 be shown. If the absentee is in another part of the district, 
 the fact is important and should be shown by noting (D.) in 
 addition. 
 
 Purchase of rice (col. 26). 
 
 This must be filled up after careful enquiry, as it is an 
 important entry. Cultivators whose land is sown chiefly with 
 jute and sugar-cane very often require to buy paddy (rice). 
 In such cases enter here the annual amount bought in maunds. 
 If it varies from year to year, give the figures of a normal
 
 142 RULES rp:lating to the 
 
 year and not the figures of a bumper year or a year of 
 distress. 
 
 Village taxation (col. 27). 
 Enter here the actual total chokidari tax paid last year. 
 The assessment should not be consulted, but the amount 
 actually paid. Note that quarterly or monthly figures will 
 not be given, but the total of the year. 
 
 Debt (col. 28). 
 
 In this column the total debt covered by written bonds 
 will be entered. This will be found out by enquiry. 
 
 Classification (col. 29). 
 
 The circle ofificer will enter in this column against each 
 family S. (starvation), A. S. (above starvation), B. C. (below 
 comfort), or C. (comfort) after consultation with the Kanungo. 
 See instructions to officers. This column should be carefully 
 filled up. 
 
 No. 181. Non-cultivating classes. 
 
 Cols. 1-7. As in no. 180 care should be taken to include 
 all inmates of the homestead, where there is a large Hindu 
 family on the joint-family system. 
 
 Produce of homestead (col. 8). 
 
 Very often there is a little land attached to the homesteads 
 of non-cultivators, e.g. weavers, fishermen, and so on, the 
 produce of which should be entered here. Some respectable 
 people cultivate a large amount of land by means of servants. 
 
 Rent (cols. 9 and 10). 
 
 When rent is paid in kind by the tenants it will be 
 shown in col. 9. The party's statement as to the amount 
 should be accepted. When rent is paid in money it will be 
 shown in col. 10. 
 
 In both cols. 8 and 9 paddy (unhuskcd rice) will be shown 
 in maunds, and all other crops, e.g. jute, in money, i.e. the 
 money equivalent of the landlord's share.
 
 GATHERING OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION 143 
 
 Trading profits (cols. 11 and 12). 
 
 The nature of the trade will be entered in col. 1 1 and the 
 annual profit in col. 13. Where traders refuse to give any 
 information, this column may be filled up by consulting 
 neighbours. This column also includes the important item of 
 moneylending. Officers should be careful to see that the 
 amount of indebtedness shown in col. 29 of no. 180, and 
 col. 22 of no. 181, in every considerable area should agree 
 with the amount of moneylending, although of course there 
 may be no balance in individual villages. The profit of 
 traders may be calculated at 20 per cent, on the annual turn- 
 over in the default of any trustworthy accounts, the profit of 
 moneylending at the rates of interest found prevalent in the 
 village. 
 
 Earnmgs in industries (cols. 13 and 14). 
 
 All industries, whether skilled or unskilled, which may be 
 found in the village should be entered here. Thus, weavers, 
 fishermen, sugar millers, carpenters, boat builders, blacksmiths, 
 &c. Labour, whether on earthwork or of any other kind, 
 should be entered in these columns. Professional begging 
 may be regarded as an industry for the purposes of this form. 
 In col. 14 the profit should be arrived at by deducting the 
 annual expenses of machinery and raw material from the total 
 income. 
 
 Domestic or menial service (cols. 15 and 16). 
 
 In these columns such menial service as that of barbers, 
 washermen, palki bearers will be included together with all 
 guards, messengers, watchmen, and servants who are not 
 cultivators. 
 
 Professions and clerical labour (cols. 17 and 18). 
 
 These are columns for the respectable classes. Here 
 include all clerks, agents of landlords, &c., lawyers, village 
 touts, doctors, priests, &c. In col. 18 the actual earnings and 
 not the nominal salary should be shown ; thus, a Naib's pay 
 may be three rupees a month, but his earnings over a hundred. 
 An estimate should in all cases be made of the real earnings.
 
 144 GATHERING OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION 
 
 Coiilributioiis of absent earning members (cols. 19 and 20). 
 Absent earning members in poor families may be 
 messengers, guards, servants, and the like ; and amongst the 
 respectable classes, lawyers, clerks, doctors, &c. Col. 20 
 should show the amount they sent home as a contribution to 
 the family expenses last year. Here, if the absent earning 
 member be employed in this district, note (D.) in col. 19 in 
 addition. 
 
 Cols. 17 to 20 should be filled up with special care in 
 dealing with a large joint-family. 
 
 Village taxation (col. 21). 
 The actual annual chokidar! tax paid should be noted. 
 Quarterly or monthly figures will not be given. 
 
 Debt (col. 22). 
 
 The total debt covered by written bonds will be entered. 
 
 Classijieation (col. 23). 
 
 The Circle Officer will fill this column after consultation 
 with his Kanungos by entering ' S.', 'A. S.', 'B.C.' or ' C 
 See instructions to officers. 
 
 II. INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED TO OFFICERS 
 
 No Kanungo or Circle Officer is of the slightest value in 
 economic enquiries unless he strips his mind entirely of 
 preconceived notions and fills it solely with zeal for scientific 
 truth. The object of the Economic Cadastre is not to prove 
 theories, but to chronicle facts ; but conditions are so diverse 
 that only a trained mind can collect the facts and give them 
 their proper perspective. 
 
 It should be noticed that there is a fundamental difference 
 between the two Economic Cadastres. In Part II (non- 
 agricultural classes) the columns are exhaustive of every 
 possible kind of income, although part of it may in cols. 8 
 and 9 be shown in maunds of paddy and not in cash. In 
 Part I, however, only that part of the income which is 
 actually obtained in cash or realized into cash will be shown.
 
 INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED TO OFFICERS 145 
 
 Cultivators grow paddy for their own consumption and 
 agricultural labourers are usually paid in kind. Where, 
 however, the agricultural labourers' payment is jute or another 
 non-food crop, the entry should be the cash value in rupees 
 and not the amount of produce. But in jute-growing areas 
 many cultivators do not ordinarily grow sufficient paddy 
 for their own subsistence. In such cases col. 26 will be filled 
 up by entering the amount of paddy which the family 
 requires to buy over and above what it grows. Here the 
 amount shown should be the excess amount required in 
 a normal year for subsistence only. 
 
 It is clear that if the statements of the public are solely 
 relied upon, the Economic Cadastres may in many cases be 
 very wide of actuality. For some columns the figures in the 
 homestead statement will give a valuable means of checking 
 information. But the real check is to be obtained in the 
 appearance of the family and the homestead. In this country 
 the evidence of the eye is ten times more valuable than the 
 evidence of the ear ; hence the need of filling up the Cadastres 
 in the homestead of each family. 
 
 It is necessary, therefore, for the Kanungo 
 
 (i) To examine personally the condition of every family in 
 its own homestead. 
 
 (2) To form definite standards of subsistence for his own use. 
 
 (3) To apply those standards on the basis of the condition 
 which he observes. 
 
 For the purposes of the Economic Cadastres the standards 
 adopted will be four : starvation, above starvation, below 
 comfort, comfort, including also all degrees of greater affluence. 
 The Kanungo will classify into one of these four standards in 
 pencil in the remarks column after personal examination in 
 the homestead. ' Starvation ' implies a condition in which 
 a family has just sufficient to keep itself alive and no more. 
 * Comfort ' implies a condition in which the material necessities 
 of life can be fully satisfied. The interval between the two is 
 covered by the standards ' above starvation ' and ' below 
 comfort '. Where a Kanungo finds an agricultural family 
 
 1908 K
 
 146 INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED TO OFFICERS 
 
 well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, this is comfort. The 
 material necessities are fully satisfied. Where the Kanungo 
 finds a family thin and ill-developed, their garments old and 
 worn, their huts ill-thatched and tumbled-down, this is star- 
 vation. In most cases the evidence of the eye is decisive, 
 but there are those of a miser's nature, who live poorly but 
 possess much, and others of a spendthrift nature who live 
 well but end in ruin. The Kanungo's local knowledge will 
 warn him of such cases. 
 
 The standard which the Kanungo forms must be capable 
 of definite expression. For subsistence a man requires money 
 for his clothes and rent besides his food. As his condition is 
 more comfortable, he will purchase more and more articles 
 for his house, his clothing, and for variety in his food. Part 
 of the standard will therefore be expressed in cash. The 
 other part will be expressed in rice. It may be accepted 
 that a man will starve on less than half a seer of rice daily, 
 and that he is comfortable on one seer daily. For a large 
 family suitable reductions 'for quantity' will be made. A 
 standard worked out on these lines would mean for any 
 family : (a) Starvation. — Per head half a maund of paddy 
 a month or 6 maunds a year with a minimum cash allowance 
 for clothes, oil, rent, and other absolute necessaries. Thus 
 a family of six would require ;^6 maunds of paddy and six 
 times the minimum cash allowance, (d) Comfort. — Per head 
 one maund of paddy a month or 12 maunds a year with 
 a suflficient allowance in money for clothing, house-repairs, 
 rent, oil, and the rest of what are generally considered 
 necessaries of life. It must be clearly understood that luxuries 
 are no part of a standard of comfort, which is attained when 
 the body is sufficiently sheltered from the weather, the stomach 
 sufficiently filled with food and the limbs decently covered 
 with garments. 
 
 For the respectable classes the standards will naturally be 
 somewhat higher. Food and clothing of a better quality are 
 required, and there are other necessary expenses such as for 
 education of the children, which the poorer classes do not
 
 INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED TO OFFICERS 147 
 
 feel. Allowances will be made for this in forming and 
 applying the standards. In the respectable classes the joint- 
 family system adds a further complication. Thus the income 
 of a professional man may not be sufficient to keep all his 
 dependants in comfort, although more than sufficient for 
 his immediate family. In order to deal with this difficulty 
 a double standard will be adopted for the respectable classes, 
 both Hindu and Muhammadan. The first standard will show 
 with the usual classification what would be the condition of 
 the * immediate ' family on the actual income of its earning 
 members. The ' immediate ' family will be considered to 
 consist of the earning member's wife and children only together 
 with his father and mother when living with him. The 
 second standard will show the actual condition of the family, 
 as augmented by the dependants found living in the home- 
 stead. 
 
 The classification of all respectable families will always 
 begin with the letter R. Thus one earning member has an 
 ' immediate ' family of seven, and a joint-family of fourteen. 
 His income is ample for the seven, but not quite sufficient for 
 the fourteen. The correct entry in the remarks column would 
 be 'R.C./B.C If the income were ample for the fourteen 
 also the entry would be ' R. C./C If it were quite insufficient 
 for the fourteen the entry would be * R.C./A.S.', and if it 
 were insufficient for the seven and misery for the fourteen 
 'R.B.C./S.' 
 
 The Kanungo has formed his standards and made his 
 classification in the remarks column. He will now fill up 
 the main columns after cross-examination of the family. He 
 will find income from moneylending, labour, the sale of 
 vegetables, dairy produce, fruit, and bye-products invariably 
 ignored or understated. Where the crops are chiefly jute and 
 sugar-cane more rice will be bought, but in ' sale of crops ' 
 the increase will be proportionate. But in any case the total 
 cash income in all the columns should roughly approximate 
 to the standard noted in the remarks column after inspec- 
 tion of the homestead. As previously explained, in Part I 
 
 K 2
 
 J 4'^ INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED TO OFFICERS 
 
 (cultivators) the realized income in money only is shown ; 
 in Part II (non-cultivators) the whole. . . . 
 
 Thi-s is the only scientific method for translating fact into 
 figures in the columns of the Economic Cadastres. It behoves 
 the Kanungo to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it. 
 Above all, let there be no stupidities such as a classification 
 of 'comfort' for a family of six and a cash income insufficient 
 for ' starvation ', or an entry of the purchase of 40 maunds of 
 rice for a single man's consumption. Where a precarious 
 existence is eked out by begging, the income will not reach 
 the 'starvation' standard. In such cases note 'also begs' in 
 the remarks column. In every other case the income shown 
 must at least equal the ' starvation ' standard. It is a fallacy 
 to suppose that a man whose available income is not sufficient 
 to keep him from starvation can support himself by borrowing. 
 Moneylenders are not by nature philanthropists and will 
 never lend more than the value of the security. A starving 
 family's security is not worth much. Doubtless in some cases 
 where the available income appears short, a suspicion may 
 cross the Kanungo's mind that this income is supplemented 
 by theft. There is, however, no column for theft in the 
 Cadastres. 
 
 III. TABULATION 
 
 The only matters in tabulation which need explanation are 
 the method by which a cash income was calculated for 
 each cultivating family and the rates at which produce was 
 valued. 
 
 Husked rice was selling at Rs. 4/4 [jcr maund when the 
 statistics were prepared. 
 
 Unhusked rice (paddy) was, however, valued at Rs. 2 per 
 maund in all the tabulations. 
 
 The value of the food of servants who received food as well 
 as wages was calculated at Rs, 50 per annum for a man and 
 Rs. 40 for a woman. The former rate is the usual rate of 
 calculation in the district (e.g. between Rs. 4 and ,5 a month)
 
 TABULATION 149 
 
 for the cost of maintenance of a servant. The rate for a woman 
 was probably too high ; but there were very few instances. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the forms no attempt was 
 made to value the rice and other foodstuffs kept for family 
 consumption. On the other hand a record was made of all 
 money earned and all sales of crops, while all rice purchased 
 was also entered where the family did not grow sufficient for 
 the annual consumption. The family was classified in one of 
 the four standards. In tabulation the rice consumed was 
 taken as 13 maunds of paddy per head in families living ' in 
 comfort', 10 maunds in families 'below comfort', (S maunds 
 in families ' above starvation ', and 6 maunds in families at 
 ' starvation '. From the total consumption of the family was 
 deducted the amount of paddy purchased in the year : the 
 remainder was then valued at Rs. 3 per maund as an equi- 
 valent for the rice consumed and for the pulses, vegetables, 
 fruits, dairy produce, bye-products, tobacco, bamboos, reeds, 
 and grasses. To the sum thus obtained was added the cash 
 income from all other sources, and this was accepted as the 
 money-income of the family. 
 
 The rate of valuation was adopted after very extensive 
 enquiries. It was the one arbitrary step in the calculations ; 
 but its general accuracy is shown by the fact that the per head 
 income of non-cultivators in the four different classes, which 
 included no valuation and was exclusively based upon the 
 figures of income supplied, turned out to be approximately 
 the same as the per head income of cultivators of the same 
 classes, calculated by aid of the valuation, while the total 
 annual value of the agricultural produce of the district agreed 
 sufficiently well with the total incomes of all agriculturalists 
 as thus calculated to show that the rate of the valuation must 
 have been essentially correct.
 
 150 POPULATION 
 
 TABLE I 
 POPULATIOX WHICH CAME UNDER REVIEW 
 
 
 
 Hindu. 
 
 Muham- 
 madan. 
 
 (chiefly 
 Christian). 
 
 Total 
 
 ,, male 
 „ female 
 
 1,861,183) J5 
 
 945,873 ho -1 
 915,310; ? 
 
 ( 691,968 
 
 348,033 
 
 i 343,935 
 
 1,164,824 
 595,560 
 569,264 
 
 4,391 
 2,280 
 2,111 
 
 Male: adults 
 Agriculturalists 
 Non-agricultura- 
 lists 
 
 404,185 
 125,241 
 
 104,838 
 97,429 
 
 298,256 
 27,664 
 
 1,091 
 148 
 
 Children 
 
 Agriculturalists 
 Non-agricultura- 
 lists 
 
 326,826 
 89,621 
 
 77,073 
 68,693 
 
 248,827 
 20,813 
 
 926 
 115 
 
 Female : adults 
 Agriculturalists 
 Non-agricultura- 
 lists 
 
 451,657 
 152,368 
 
 119,669 
 119,729 
 
 330,897 
 32,485 
 
 1,091 
 154 
 
 Children 
 
 Agriculturalists 
 Non-agricultura- 
 Hsts 
 
 246,962 ■ 
 64,323 
 
 56,344 
 48,193 
 
 189,855 
 16,027 
 
 763 
 103 
 
 Total 
 
 Agriculturalists 
 Non- agricultura- 
 lists 
 
 1,429,630 
 431,553 
 
 357,924 
 334,044 
 
 1,067,835 
 96,989 
 
 3,871 
 520 
 
 Proportion of males to females in total population 103 per cent.: 
 amongst Hindus loi per cent. : amongst Muhammadans 105 percent.: 
 amongst agriculturalists 104 per cent. : amongst non-agriculturalists 
 99 per cent. 
 
 Proportion of children to adults in total population 64 per cent. : 
 amongst Hindus 55 per cent. : amongst Muhammadans 70 per cent. : 
 amongst agriculturalists 67 per cent. : amongst non-agriculturalists 
 55 per cent. 
 
 Note. — Some commentary on these figures and a comparison with the 
 Census (1911) figures will be found on pp. 78 and 79. They should not 
 be studied without reference to the remarks there made.
 
 INCOME AND ECONOMIC CONDITION 151 
 
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 154 
 
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 DEBT 
 
 155 
 
 TABLE III 
 
 DEBT 
 
 {a) General Summary 
 
 In the 
 population 
 as a whole. 
 
 Total amount of debt 
 
 Average amount of debt 
 per family 
 
 per head . 
 
 Number of families : 
 without debt . 
 indebted . 
 
 Rs. 
 
 Rs. 
 
 Rs. 
 
 Sh. 
 
 20,147,232 
 i,343>H8 
 
 59 
 
 3-19 
 
 II 
 
 15 
 
 202,394 
 139.714 
 
 Amongst 
 
 cultivators 
 
 only. 
 
 14,155,946 
 943,729 
 
 55 
 
 3-13 
 
 10 
 
 13 
 
 140,215 
 116,466 
 
 Amongst 
 non- 
 culti- 
 vators 
 only. 
 
 5,991,286 
 399,419 
 
 70 
 
 4-13 
 
 14 
 
 19 
 
 62,179 
 23,248 
 
 59 
 
 12 
 
 55 
 24 
 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 1* 
 
 121 
 8-1 
 
 73 
 
 7* 
 6 
 
 258 
 17-4 
 
 Percentage of population : 
 
 Free from debt . — 
 In debt about one-quarter ) 
 
 of annual income j 
 
 In debt about one-half of 
 
 annual income 
 In debt about one year's) 
 
 income [ ' 
 
 In debt two years' income) ^ 
 
 and more j 
 
 Average amount of debt amongst indebted families ; 
 
 Rs. 144 
 
 £s. 9 
 
 Amongst Muhammadans the average family debt was Rs. 58 or 21 per 
 cent, of annual income amongst cultivators and Rs. 40 or 18 per cent, of 
 annual income amongst non-cultivators. Amongst Hindus the average 
 family debt was Rs. 47 or 17 per cent, of annual income amongst cul- 
 tivators and Rs. 80 or 26 per cent, of annual income amongst non- 
 cultivators. Amongst Christians debt was 11 percent, of income amongst 
 cultivators and 20 per cent, amongst non-cultivators, the average amounts 
 being Rs. 50 and Rs. 74 respectively. 
 
 The total debt amongst cultivators was Rs. 14,155,946 (Muhammadans 
 Rs. 11,252,539: Hindus Rs. 2,883,201: others Rs. 20,206) of which 
 Rs. 7,054,092 (50 per cent.) was incurred by families 'in comfort', Rs. 
 4,453,511 (32 per cent.) by families 'below comfort', Rs. 2,264,200 (16 
 percent.) by families 'above want', and Rs. 384,143 (2-7 per cent.) by 
 families ' in want '. 
 
 The total debt amongst non-cultivators was Rs. 5,991,286 (Muham- 
 madans Rs. 848,110: Hindus Rs. 5,138,140: others Rs. 5,036) of 
 which Rs. 3,695,511 (6ii per cent.) was incurred by families'in comfort', 
 Rs. 1,338,321 (22 per cent.) by families 'below comfort', Rs. 746,888 
 (12^ per cent.) by families ' above want ', and Rs. 210,566 (3I per cent.) by 
 families ' in want'.
 
 156 
 
 DEBT 
 
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 DEBT 157 
 
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 158 
 
 TAXATION 
 
 TABLE IV 
 
 villa(;e 
 
 TAXATION 
 
 (CHOKIDARl TAX) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In whole 
 
 class (i. e 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 includin 
 
 g families 
 
 Upon families 
 
 Number 
 of 
 
 Assess- 
 ment per 
 
 Burden 
 on 
 
 Yield 
 
 exempt 
 equiv, 
 
 tax per 
 family of 
 
 ed) yield 
 ilent to 
 
 classified as 
 living 
 
 families 
 exempted 
 
 family on 
 
 families 
 
 taxed. 
 
 income of 
 
 families 
 
 taxed. 
 
 of 
 tax. 
 
 propor- 
 tion of 
 income 
 
 
 per cent. 
 
 R. A. 
 
 per cent. 
 
 Rs. 
 
 R.A. 
 
 per cen 
 
 Cultivators : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in comfort 
 
 6-5 
 
 I 
 
 0-3 
 
 118,700 
 
 0-I5 
 
 0-27 
 
 below comfort 
 
 7-3 
 
 0-I4 
 
 0-4 
 
 59,830 
 
 013 
 
 0-34 
 
 above want 
 
 13-3 
 
 0-I2 
 
 0-5 
 
 29,715 
 
 O-IO 
 
 0-37 
 
 in want 
 
 34-2 
 
 O'lO 
 
 0.5 
 
 4,236 
 
 07 
 
 0-35 
 
 Total 
 
 II 
 
 o-i4^ 
 
 0-39 
 
 212,481 
 
 0-I3 
 
 0-30 
 
 Non-cultivators : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in comfort 
 
 9-6 
 
 1-6 
 
 0-3 
 
 49.507 
 
 1-4 
 
 029 
 
 below comfort 
 
 13-2 
 
 0.15 
 
 0-5 
 
 19,559 
 
 0-131 
 
 0-40 
 
 above want 
 
 22-6 
 
 013 
 
 0-6 
 
 10,821 
 
 o-io 
 
 0-43 
 
 in want 
 
 42-5 
 
 0'12 
 
 0-8 
 
 . 2,029 
 
 0.7 
 
 0-44 
 
 Total 
 
 15 
 
 1-2 
 
 0-4 
 
 81,916 
 
 0-I5 
 
 0-32 
 
 In the whole 
 
 12 
 
 0-15! 
 
 0-4 
 
 294,397 
 
 0-13^ 
 
 0-30 
 
 population