Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c41.s3.184

v3.c41.s3.184

Farming System.—It is the practice in this State to farm its lands to the highest bidder; and the mode of farming is most pernicious to the interests of the State and the cultivating classes, both of whom it must eventually impoverish. The farmers-general are the wealthy bankers and merchants, who make their offers for entire districts; these they underlet in *tappas*, or subdivisions, the holders of which again subdivide them into single villages, or even shares of a village. With the profits of all these persons, the expenses attending collections, quartering of *barkan-dazes*, or armed police, are the poor Bhumias and Ryots saddled. Could they only know the point where exaction must stop, they would still have a stimulus to activity; but when the crops are nearly got in, and all just demands satisfied, they suddenly hear that a new renter has been installed in the district, having ousted the holder by some ten or twenty thousand rupees, and at the precise moment when the last toils of the husbandman were near completion. The renter has no remedy; he may go and “throw his turban at the door of the palace, and exclaim *dohai, Raja Sahib!*” till he is weary, or marched off to the Kotwal’s *chabutra*, and perhaps fined for making a disturbance.² Knowing, however, that there is little benefit to be derived from such a course, they generally submit, go through the whole accounts, make over the amount of collections, and with the host of vultures in their train, who, never unprepared for such changes, have been making the most of their ephemeral power by battening on the hard earnings of the peasantry, retire for this fresh band of harpies to pursue a like course. Nay, it is far from uncommon for three different renters to come upon the same district in one season, or even the crop of one season, for five or ten thousand rupees, annulling the existing engagement, no matter how far advanced. Such was the condition of this State; and when to these evils were superadded the exactions called dand, or barar, forced contributions to pay those armies of robbers who swept the lands, language cannot exaggerate the extent of misery. The love of country must be powerful indeed which can enchain man to a land so misgoverned, so unprotected [433].