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are placed under the appointments. This

control of one officer who holds both officer also exercises general control

over the work of the Photozincographic Press at Poona.

REVENUE SURVEYS

The following extract from a Government Resolution reviewing the last progress report of the Survey Commissioner in 1901 shows the nature and importance of the survey and the principles upon which Land Revenue assessment is based

“The value of the services rendered to the State by the Survey Department can hardly be exaggerated. At the time when the existing system was introduced, that is to say, about 60 years ago, Government were still confronted with the formidable problem of settling upon an equitable and workable basis the revenue demand for a vast number of small holdings. Several modes of settlement, based on pre-existing practice, had been tried; some of them, such as the Pringle settlement, had disastrously failed. Out of the prevailing confusion the principles of the existing system of survey settlement were evolved by the genius of Messrs. Wingate and Goldsmid, the authors of the celebrated Joint Report. Upon the principles laid down in that report has been founded a system of land tenure and assessment admirably adapted to the requirements of the widely varying conditions of the different parts of the Presidency. Under the system of measurement and classification by subordinate agency, subject to the test of technically trained and skilled supervising officers, methods were employed by which the area of every one of these small holdings could be measured, and the relative productive capacity of the soil estimated with scientific accuracy. By the system of grouping the relative economic and climatic advantages of different tracts were duly taken into account. In this manner the equitable distribution of the assessment was secured. The rates charged at the original settlement per acre of land occupied were in many instances extraordinarily low as compared with those previously levied.

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But as anticipated by the framers of the system the effect of the fixed tenure and of a certain and moderate assessment was

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at once seen in a rapid expansion of cultivation, which even at the low rates of assessment sanctioned yielded a large increase of revenue. The extensive areas of waste land existing at the time when the system was introduced have been employed largely for the growth of crops valuable for export purposes. Despite the check occasioned by many bad seasons and several disastrous famines and notwithstanding the heavy burden of indebtedness with which the agricultural population was saddled from the first, the value of land and the prosperity of the country, and with them the revenue have steadily increased. When the first leases of 30 years expired, it was found possible to increase the assessment by very substantial amounts; but the enhancements have with rare exceptions been borne without difficulty.

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The Survey Department has cost the State from first to last many lakhs of rupees. But the outlay has been repaid over and over again. One peculiar merit of the system deserves mention. By the division of the whole culturable area into what may be called units of assessment, the extension of cultivation was made to carry with it an increase of revenue, while the revenue payer was placed in a position to ease his burden by giving up the occupation of lands unprofitable to him. The extensions of cultivation which have occurred have thus been profitable to the State no less than to the individual; whereas under a zemindari or kindred system, the State would have gained nothing however much cultivation had extended throughout the whole of 30 years' leases.

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But it has not been only as a revenue producing instrument that the Survey Department has proved its usefulness. The system to which the valuation of soils has been reduced is in many respects unique, and has resulted in a record of that valuation complete for innumerable small parcels of land. Probably no other province or country is possessed of any similar record. Its chief and immediate value for administrative purposes is that it enables field operations to be entirely dispensed with in all future settlements. The change of assessment can be decided for a whole tract on a review of its economic conditions and revenue history and the people are saved from all the uncertainty and harassment consequent upon enquiry

into the circumstances of individual holdings. The greatest credit attaches to the founders of this system, which has stood the test of experience and practical application in the most satisfactory manner. Developments have been introduced, but in no particular have the principles, and in very few have even the individual rules and directions laid down in the Joint Report been widely departed from."

Comparative valuations in the fertility of soils were expressed for convenience of handlings in parts of a rupee, 16 annas representing the valuation of a perfect field, from which deductions were made for faults, such as slope or irregularity of surface, excess of lime or moisture, or inferiority in the character or depth of the soil. This at least was the arrangement introduced under the joint rules. As time went on, experience showed the advisability of making allowances for advantages by making additions to the scale which carried the maximum above 16 annas. An example of this is the advantage that may be derived by land by the deposit on it of fine silt owing to flooding or from proximity to a stream on the bank of which a well can be dug from which the land can be irrigated.

THE RECORD OF RIGHTS

Two important improvements which have in recent years been introduced into the revenue administration of this Presidency may be described. The first is the Record of Rights. The Record prepared by the Survey Department was necessarily a fiscal record, the object of which was to show from whom the assessment was due and what that assessment was. It was not a record of rights or title. In course of time it was found that a Record of Rights based on possession, if not on title, was indispensable for the needs of the administration, more especially because the occupants in this Presidency, unlike tenants elsewhere, to whom in status they correspond, had an unrestricted right of transfer. The necessity of having such a record was pressed upon this Government by the Government of India and after a great deal of discussion regarding its suitability to this Presidency it was resolved in 1901 to prepare an initial record designed to show in accurate detail exactly how the land.

was held, because the revenue records gave only partial and in some respects misleading information on the point. The record was intended to show every right from that of a registered occupant to an annual tenant-at-will.

The experiment so started in selected talukas was found to be successful, showing as it did that the preparation of a record was possible and would be welcomed by the people. With a view to give a legal character to the record, to compel persons acquiring new rights to give information of it to the revenue authorities, and to require the Civil Courts to insist on the production of extracts from the Record in civil suits tried by them which relate to land, Act IV of 1903 was passed. This Act requires that a complete initial record showing all varieties of right in the land should be prepared by the Village Accountants, examined and checked by the officers of the Revenue and Land Records Departments and announced to the ryot. Provision has been made in the Act and the Rules under it that the Record after its completion and announcement should be accurately maintained by what is called the Mutation Register. The Record has now been prepared in all Government villages and some alienated villages of the Presidency, and is being maintained and kept up to date by Mutation Registers. Its preparation has placed at our disposal a large amount of important information regarding the various rights in land and the profits of cultivation, and has proved extremely useful. The whole system of village accounts is now based on the Record of Rights.

REMISSIONS OF REVENUE

The second important feature that has been imported into the revenue system of this Presidency is a regular system of suspensions and remissions of land revenue when the crops fall below a certain standard or when the water-supply on the irrigated lands fails. The assessment fixed under Survey Settlement is a fixed demand and represents the revenue payable on an average in a series of years, the original idea being that on an average the rayat saves in a good year sufficient to enable him to pay the assessment without borrowing in a bad year. Experience, however, showed that among the smaller

landholders and in tracts subject to frequent vicissitudes of the season this idea was fallacious, and in 1906-07 a regular system of suspensions and remissions was introduced. The system authorises the Collector, when he has ascertained by local enquiries that, owing to a partial or total failure or destruction of crops throughout any tract, suspension of the collection of land revenue is necessary, to grant suspensions according to a scale to all occupants, agriculturists and non-agriculturists alike, without enquiry into the circumstances of individuals. As regards remissions, the grant of them depends on the character of three seasons following that in which the assessment is suspended. Ordinarily suspended arrears which are more than three years old are to be remitted by the Collector. The remissions are to be granted to occupants cultivating their own holdings and also to non-cultivating occupants, provided that when land is cultivated by tenants, corresponding remission is granted by the superior holder or landlord to the inferior holder

or tenant.

SYSTEM OF LAND TENURE

In the Bombay Presidency outside Sind the land revenue system is with few exceptions ryotwari, i.e., a system of settlement with the rayats, or cultivators of small holdings whose revenue payments are fixed after careful measurement and classification of the land in their possession. The maximum and usual term of settlement is thirty years.

At the conclusion of the term of settlement the land revenue payable is liable to revision; but the holder has the right of occupancy in perpetuity provided he pays the assessment as revised from time to time; and this right is heritable and transferable. This is known as the full survey tenure and is that on which land is ordinarily held. The position of the occupant is thus more secure than it was before the advent of the British Government. In earlier times, it is true, the hereditary occupant or mirasdar held land on terms which precluded its forfeiture on failure to pay the revenue demand unless he absented himself for a term of over thirty years. But on the other hand he was liable to extra and arbitrary impositions and was responsible for the default of neighbouring mirasdars, while his lien