No More Learning

• 39 and 40 Geo. III, c. 79, and 47 Geo. III, sess. 2, c. 68.
33 Geo. III, c. 52.
3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85.
: Political Dispatch, No. 18, 27 December, 1833.
53 Geo. III, c. 155. • Reg. 1 of 1806.
10 Reg. vn of 1817.
8


## p. 42 (#72) ##############################################

42
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
the united board exercised general supervision over revenue matters.
In that year the portfolio system was introduced, the number of
members was raised to four (the councillor-president had disappeared
long before) and the various branches of the revenue administration
were distributed among the members as commissioners.
The country was, and is, divided into districts? which have varied
in number from twenty to twenty-six, and these again into taluks
which now average about 700 square miles. At the head of the
district stands the collector, who first appears on the scene in 1787.
The twentieth century found him still the local representative of
government; chief magistrate; head of the Land Revenue and Forest
Departments; as president of the District Board, supervising roads,
schools and hospitals; possessed of a measure of control over the police
and municipalities; as a revenue judge, exercising summary juris-
diction in many matters. In his revenue capacity he is in direct
subordination to the board, to which body appeals lie against many
of his orders, executive and judicial. To collectors were assigned in
1792 covenanted assistants, and, later on, fixed territorial jurisdictions
were allotted to the assistant and subordinate collectors in the form
of divisions made up of groups of taluks wherein they exercise most of
the powers possessed by collectors. The taluks were from the first under
Indian tahsildars; above them all the executive officers were English.
No practical steps were taken to open the higher executive to natives
of the country until India Act I of 1857 authorised the appointment
of deputy-collectors, who occupy a position similar to that of
covenanted divisional officers.
A Supreme Court had been established in 18012 but its jurisdiction
was almost wholly confined to Madras town. The administration of
justice up-country was conducted under the system introduced in
1802-6 and modified by the legislation of 1816. The reforms of the
latter year were designed to reduce expense and hasten disposal by
larger employment of native agency, to simplify litigation by reverting
to earlier methods whereby civil and criminal cases were largely
disposed of in the village, and to ensure greater control over crime by
restoring to collectors magisterial powers and the supervision of the
police. The central court for up-country purposes consisted of a body
of judges presided over by a member of council. 3 On its civil side this
tribunal was called “sadr adalat”; on its criminal side, “sadr
faujdari adalat”. Below this body functioned four provincial courts
dealing with most of the civil appeals and with suits over Rs. 5000;
these bodies, as courts of circuit, disposed also of all the more im-
portant criminal work. 4 In the district the principal civil judge was
Forinerly called zillahs, the taluks being styled districts.
39 & 40 Geo. III, c. 79.
3 Regs. v and viu of 1802 and in of 1807. This court, as at first constituced, consisted
of the governor in council.
• Regs. IV and vir of 1802 and xi of 1809.
2


## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################

JUDICIAL ORGANISATION
43
the zillah judge, assisted sometimes by registers or assistant judges to
whom actions might be referred for disposal. 1 The presiding officers
of all the above courts were European covenanted civilians, who were
assisted on legal points by Indian law officers. Below came three
classes of native judges, namely, sadr amins to whom suits up to Rs. 300
might be referred, district munsiffs who were authorised to deal with
suits up to Rs. 2004 and village headmen or munsiffs who had power to
dispose of certain cases not exceeding in value Rs. 10 or, with the
consent of the parties, Rs. 100. 5 Both the district and the village
munsiffs were required, on demand, to summon panchayats, or bodies
of arbitrators, which had unlimited jurisdiction in respect of the
classes of cases which might be referred to them.
Within the district the principal criminal jurisdiction was vested
in the zillah judge to whom the register gave help as assistant criminal
judge, but six months' imprisonment was the limit of the latter's
powers.
. ? The collector as magistrate and his covenanted assistants as
assistant magistrates had a very restricted power of punishment, their
main duty being the arrest and commitment of offenders. & Certain
petty misdemeanours were punishable by tahsildars and village head-
men. ' For want of anything better, the Muhammadan criminal law,
as interpreted by the law officers and modified from time to time by
enactment, was applied in the criminal courts until the Penal Code
came into force in 1862.
Such were the judicial arrangements as they stood in 1818; and of
the reforms carried out in 1816 none was more important adminis-
tratively than the severance of the unsuitable association of the judge
with the magistracy and police, none more popular than the creation
of the district munsiffs. 10 It was, in fact, the popularity of these latter
officers which rendered ineffectual the effort to revive the old method
of adjudication by panchayats. Soon afterwards we find the directors
pressing for a still more extended use of Indian agency and, as a con-
sequence, provision was made for the establishment of “auxiliary”
and “native” civil and criminal courts, possessing in defined areas
jurisdiction on the same lines as that exercised by the zillah and
criminal judge. 11 The “auxiliary” judges differed from the “native"
judges in that they had jurisdiction in respect of Europeans and
Americans, but they disappeared in time, whereas the “native”
judges, under changed titles (they were known as principal sadr amins
after 1836), have lasted to the present day. It was at this point that
Regs. Il of 1802 and vir and xn of 1809.
* Abolished by India Act XI of 1864. They were also employed as sadr amins.
* Regs. vil and x of 180g and viu of 1816.
* Reg. vi of 1816.
* Reg. IV of 1816.
6 Regs. V and vi of 1816.
• Reg. x of 1816. The limit was raised to two years' imprisonment in certain cases by
Reg. vi of 1822.
Reg. ix of 1816.
• Reg. xi of 1816.
19 They took the place of the "native commissioners" of 1802 with jurisdiction up to
Rs. 80.
11 Regs. 1, 11, vi and vm of 1827.
.
STEPHENS
GAR
)


## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################

44
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a modified form of the English jury-system was introduced into the
courts of circuit by Regulation x of 1827.
A new phase opened with India Act VII of 1843. The provincial
courts of civil appeal and circuit and the zillah courts were abolisned
and their civil and criminal powers were distributed between new
“civil and sessions” judges of the zillah and the principal sadr arins
(or the "auxiliary” judges); at the same time the powers of the
magistrates were substantially enlarged. In the result, whereas in
1802 no Indian could try a criminal case or deal with a suit valued
at more than Rs. 80, an Indian judge might now adjudicate suits up
to Rs. 10,000 in value and pass sentences of two years' imprisonment.
There was an extension in the same direction later, 2 when district
munsiffs were conceded a limited criminal jurisdiction.
At the beginning of the present period the zamindari system pre-
vailed in the Northern Circars, Salem, Chingleput and certain other
areas; village leases in the Ceded districts, Nellore, the Arcots, Palnad,
Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly and Tanjore; ryotwari in Malabar, Canara,
Coimbatore, Madura and Dindigul. 2
As a revenue system, the zamindari settlement was not a success,
even where it had for basis the old estates of poligars; as to the artificial
estates, or muttahs, they came tumbling down almost as soon as they
were set up. The process of decay was both rapid and long continued,
so that we find the whole of the Guntur collectorate and much of the
Masulipatam collectorate passing over from zamindari to ryotwari
between 1835 and 1849, and now the system applies to less than one-
fourth of the presidency. Certain features of the settlement call for
further remarks.
After long discussion in Bengal it was decided that the demand on
the estates should be fixed in perpetuity. The principle of an un-
alterable assessment is not in favour nowadays, but, throughout the
first half of the last century, there prevailed in Madras, vaguely felt
rather than definitely asserted, an idea that, in all forms of land-
revenue settlement, fixity of demand should be aimed at. This view
was not always endorsed by the court of directors, but it commended
itself to the secretary of state as late as 1862, and in 1868 the Board
of Revenue had nothing to say against a permanent ryotwari settle-
ment. Though a rapid rise in prices led to the abandonment of the
notion, it was not formally renounced until 1883. 3
In investing zamindars with “the proprietary right of the soil", the
legislature gave rise to misconceptions which had to be corrected later
by a declaration that there was no intention to infringe the rights of
third parties. There never had been such intention, but the legisla-
1 India Act XII of 1854.
: Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818.
• Court's Dispatch, 16 December, 1812 (Revenue Selections, 1820, vol. 1); Board's Pro-
ceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868; S. of S. Dispatch, 28 March, 1883, and Baden
Powell, 1, 340.
Reg. IV of 1822.


## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################

THE ZAMINDARI SETTLEMENT
45
tion of 18021 gave insufficient protection to the cultivators, while
granting to the zamindars powers of distraint and ejectment which
could be challenged only through a regular suit. This defect led to
Regulation v of 1822, which brought the collector in as a summary
arbitrator between zamindar and occupier, an arrangement which
worked with some success until the courts began to admit claims to
determine rents on a competitive basis and to alter the customary
modes of sharing the crops. Act VIII of 1865 was intended to settle
these and other questions but caused much greater confusion by
declaring that all contracts for rent, express or implied, must be
enforced. The position was not made clear until the Estates Land
Act, 1908, came into operation. This elaborate enactment brought
the revenue courts into summary operation in all relations between
zamindar and ryot, conferred, in express terms, right of permanent
occupancy upon most of the zamindar ryots, and enabled others to
secure that privilege by, means of a small payment. The need for
protecting the tenants had been mainly felt in the Telugu country;
among the Tamils there had always been a much stronger sense of
private property in land and the ryot's claim to occupancy right had
generally been accepted. So much for the cultivators. The question
whether the zamindars themselves did not need protection was con-
sidered by Munro, but nearly eighty years elapsed before anything
was done in that direction. Then, when debt and suits for partition
had broken up various estates, it became a matter of concern to the
government to preserve the rest. The case of indebtedness was met by
authorising the government, on request, to place embarrassed estates
under the Court of Wards. 3 The other threat had arisen from a change
in judicial opinion, the courts receding from the position that im-
partibility and inalienability attach by general custom to the ancient
zamindaris, and holding that the existence of these attributes must
be proved for each individual estate. This dictum gave rise to much
ruinous litigation, but, after considerable delay, a remedy was pro-
vided in the form of a law which imposed restrictions upon the
alienation of specified estates, and declared them to be impartible
and heritable by a single heir.
The decennial leases, introduced by the Madras Government “to
become a fixed settlement if approved” and immediately condemned
by the court of directors, were drawing to a close when the present
period opens and did not everywhere run their full course. With the
expiration of the last of them, the village lease system disappeared
except in a few peculiar localities. The decennial leases had been
1 Regs. xxv and xxxn of 1802.
· Minute, 19 September, 1820.
• Act IV of 1899.
• Act II of 1904, replacing similar acts of 1903 and 1902; see also Srinivasa Ragha-
vachari, Progress of the Madras Presidency, p. 245.
• Dispatches, 16 December, 1812, and 16 December, 1813.


## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################

46
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a
granted on more lenient terms than the triennial ones, but the general
result of the arrangement never came under review. According to
the Board of Revenue the leases were working satisfactorily in 1818,1
but the board was strongly prejudiced and the reports from individual
districts are by no means suggestive of success. The board's bias in
favour of village lcascs may, perhaps, be explained in part by the
existence in portions of the Tamil country of a tenure to which they
really seemed to be thoroughly well adapted. This tenure, commonly
known as mirasi right, was decaying but sufficiently alive to engender
a vast and enthusiastic correspondence in which the varying views of
the government are generally in opposition to the varying views of
the board. In this tenure the ownership of each village (subject to
the usual claim of the state to a share of the produce) vested in a single
mirasidar or, more commonly, in a body of mirasidars. From the tilth
the mirasidars derived a share of the produce and, in some places,
grain-fees also; over the waste they claimed certain privileges. The
main controversy arose over the questions whether a ryotivari settle-
ment should be made with the mirasidars or the actual cultivators, and
whether the mirasidars had a right to prevent the state from assigning
the waste for cultivation. The former point may be considered to have
been settled by the cautious instructions of the directors to respect
the rights of the mirasidars but to be chary of ousting persons already
recognised as owners, and to dispose of all disputes on their merits. 2
On the latter point the final decision was that the mirasidars had no
power to keep waste out of cultivation, but should have the first
refusal of any part applied for by a non-mirasidar. 3 The government
showed a disposition to go back on this decision, but was vigorously
reproved by the board and overruled by the directors. 4
Officially the mirasi system is dead, but traces of it survive in
Chingleput, where the ordinary assessment is in some cases reduced
to allow of the payment to old mirasi families of sums in lieu of
former claims upon the cultivators.
Ryotwari falls into three stages, early, middle and late, and the
only description common to all is that it is a mode of settlement with
small farmers, so small, indeed, that their average holding is, on
recent figures, only about 6, acres. Nowadays the tenure is regarded
as possessing the following properties: the registered occupier is, so
far as concerns government, free to alicnate, cncumber and devise his
land at discretion; subject to unimportant qualifications, he may at
any time relinquish any portion of his holding; he can never be ousted
unless he fails to pay regularly the assessment fixed on the land or any
1
1 Proceedings, 5 January, 1818. The vigorous style of this paper, a masterly bit of work,
shows the warm concern of the board in the result of the duel between village lease and
ryotwari.
? Dispatch, 18 August, 1824.
· Dispatches, No. 8, 28 July, 1841, and No. 17, 3 July, 1844.
Dispatch, 17 December, 1856.


## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################

THE RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT
47
other charge by law recoverable as land revenue, in which case his
land may be attached and sold to the extent necessary to discharge
the debt;. no additional charge may be imposed on account of im-
provements effected at the ryot's cost, but a separate charge may be
made for minerals extracted; thc rate of assessment is liable to
alteration on the expiry of the specified period for which it has been
fixed and then only. But these peculiarities have been of gradual
growth; not onc of them can be said to have been universally applicable
to early ryolwari which, introduced by Read, approved by the
directors as an experiment, widely extended by Munro and others,
was abruptly brought to an end in some districts by the zamindari
settlement, in others by the village leases.
The re-introduction of ryotwari between 1813 and 1822 marks the
beginning of middle ryotwari-a period of chaos. To begin with there
was no proper basis of survey on which to construct it. Some sur-
veying had been done in carly ryotwari, and sometimes done well
though unprofessionally, but large areas had not been surveyed at all
and in others the survey had been mere pretence; there were no
boundary marks, no maps and very few survey-records of any sort.
In middle ryotwari nothing was done to cure these defects, and without
a proper survey there could be no systematic assessment.
By old custom the ryot and the state shared the crop or its cash
equivalent. In theory the ryot generally got about half, in practice
often only a fifth or less. 3 Read assigned to the state one-third of the
gross value of the crop on dry land and two-fifths on irrigated land;
Munro was forced, in the Ceded districts, to give the state nearly half
but regarded one-third as the proper figure. Under the Company
the assessment was always fixed in terms of money, but the rates
attached to different soils had no very close relation to output, even
where efforts were made to establish such relation. Extraneous
matters were taken into consideration, such as the ryot's caste, his
means, even his health; and sometimes the starting point was a lump
sum for the district which was distributed among the villages and
then individual demands had to be adjusted to make good the charge
on the village. Also the classifier generally had an eye to the old
revenue and in places there was little or no attempt to revise the
current rates. On the whole the earliest assessments under the Com-
pany were too high. The imposition upon carly ryotwari of the
zamindari settlement here and the village leases there made matters
worse, the identification of certain rates with certain fields dropping
out of sight. In fact the innumerable rates of middle ryotwari,
although supposed to represent 50 per cent. on wet and 33 per cent.
on dry, were usually only the traditional rates recorded in the village
1 E. g. the tax on land leviable under the Local Boards Act.
2 Act II of 1864, s. 44. 3 Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818.
• Cons. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 (Selections, Aladras, New Series, vol. Lii).


## p. 48 (#78) ##############################################

48
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
registers which had been open to manipulation by dishonest village
accountants; and these traditional rates were in general excessive,
varied from village to village, and were not based on any apparent
principle. Thus the vice of immoderate assessment infected both early
and middle ryotwari and many years passed before there was any
systematic attempt to cure the evil. Under Indian rule the demand
upon the land had been generally met because village officers and
ryots conspired to defraud the state by concealing cultivation and in
other ways. Under the closer control of European officers, such
practices became more difficult, and the effects of over-assessment
were more felt. Even under these conditions agriculture might have
made some progress, had it not been for the twenty-year spell of
falling prices which began in 1830. The strain due to this cause
combined with local customs to produce that multiplicity of methods
which render middle ryotwari so complicated. The assessment might
be determined by measurement or estimate of the crop on the ground;
or might vary from year to year with the rise and fall of prices; or
might be fixed for the whole holding which was practically an
unchangeable unit by reason of checks upon the surrender of portions;
or might be charged on the village, the ryots, village officers or
collector determining the individual liabilities, with or without
periodical redistribution of land or compulsory transfers of holdings
on demand; or it might be settled with the individual in accordance,
more or less, with modern principles. It was possible to find in vogue
at the same time in one district half a dozen of these methods, all
figuring as forms of ryotwari. But, if the growing poverty of the ryots
conduced to the appearance of a variety of shifts for raising the
revenue, it also forced on the authorities the abolition of objectionable
taxes, various local reductions in rates of assessment and the discon-
tinuance of mischievous practices which had come down to middle
ryotwari from earlier times. From the outset the custom of holding
one ryot responsible for the arrears of another was repudiated.
Then
the ancient but unauthorised practice of “inducing” ryots to take up
more land than they wanted died out, and various checks on the free
surrender of land were removed. Ryots' improvements used to be
taxed by the levy of higher rates on the valuable crops raised under
private wells; but one concession after another was granted, until
assessment became wholly irrespective of profits due to well-sinking.
The old custom of granting advances to paupers to enable them to
carry on cultivation had done much more harm than good, and was
abandoned. And, as these practices disappeared, there went with
them much of the monstrous system of“remissions” which had grown
up in consequence of them and which had converted the annual
settlement into a debasing scramble for charity. The various changes
which brought the theory of ryotwari to its present form left un-
touched, however, the main defect-an excessive, unequal and


## p. 49 (#79) ##############################################

SURVEY AND SETTLEMENT
49
unsystematic assessment. It was not until 1855 that the government
faced the long-overdue reform, and proposed to cariy out a pro-
fessional field-survey of the presidency accompanied by a detailed
classification of soils and valuation of them for assessment. 1 It was
apparently anticipated that the work could be done once for all in
twenty years, but the Survey and Settlement Departments have been
busy ever since.
The principles of settlement as laid down on this occasion are on
lines essentially modern, but discussion ensued as to whether the state
share of the produce should be calculated on the gross crop or on the
value of the crop after deducting cultivation expenses and as to the
period for which the assessment should remain unchangeable, and it
was not until 1864 that it was decided that the government share
should be limited to half the net value of the crop. The period of each
settlement was then fixed at thirty years, though later it was left to
the discretion of the government. Previously there had been no
"period of settlement”, the ryot holding on indefinitely, for, so long
as it was the “general and unhesitating belief” that the ryotwari rates
then in force could never be enhanced, that is, up to 1855, 2 the need
for fixing a period did not arise. Middle ryotwari ended in each
district with the introduction of settlements under the scheme of
1855. 3
This great reform involved the reconstitution of the Survey Depart-
ment which, originating in 1800 for trigonometrical and topographical
work, had since 1818 been employed on the latter only. The topo-
graphical business was taken over, in 1886, by the Government of
India, and the department, being then solely concerned with revenue
survey, came under the control of the Board of Revenue in 1903, when
also, to avoid periodical resurveys, the Land Records Department was
fully organised for the purpose of maintaining boundary marks and
indicating changes of ownership on the field-sketches.
The ryotwari system of the west coast, as peculiar in some respects,
demands a passing notice. Among the scattered farmers of the
.
sequestered valleys of Malabar no village system could arise; in a
country where the rajas took their dues in military service alone no
room could be found for zamindars. So from the first ryotwari was
applied. In 1805 it was proclaimed that the settlement would be with
the principal landholders or janmis, but difficulties arose because many
janmis had fled before the Mysore invasion, and the Mysore Govern-
ment, in introducing a land-tax, had often settled with the principal
occupants or kanomdars. As a consequence the latter were frequently
i Cons. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 (Selections, Madras, New Series, vol. Lint). The govern-
ment pointed out that in thirty-four years there had been hardly any extension of cultiva-
tion and that of the registered arable land less than a half was under the plough.
* Revenue Board's Proceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868.
• For the general subject of the ryotwari system, cf. Nicholson, District Manual of Coim-
balore, chap. v.
CHIVI
4


## p. 50 (#80) ##############################################

50
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
held responsible for the revenue until, in-889, the High Court
declared this practice to be illegal. That decision resulted in Act III
of 1896 enabling the collector to determine in whom the ownership
resided, and permitting in certain cases the joint registration of both
landholder and occupant. But the position of the kanomdars is so
peculiar that, in the theoretical distribution of the produce in
Malabar, three persons are taken into account, instead of two only,
namely, the state, the landholder and the occupant. The ryotwari
of South Canara resembles in some respects that of Malabar.
Yet another form of tenure calls for notice, as it prevails in not far
short of a tenth of the presidency. Inams are grants, complete or
partial, of the state's interest in land; they may be made in perpetuity
or for a period, and commonly take the form of an assignment of the
land-revenue derivable from a given area. They were freely granted
in support of public offices or charitable or religious institutions, for
the maintenance of Brahmans, or for personal and private reasons.
In the anarchy of the eighteenth century, this mode of intercepting
the public revenue attained monstrous dimensions, many grants being
made by persons who had no authority to bestow them, while village
officers transferred large areas to themselves as inam by mere altera-
tion of the accounts. On British acquisition many of the obviously
unauthorised assignments were cancelled and arrangements were
made by Regulation xxxi of 1802 for an investigation of titles which,
however, the collectors were mostly too busy to carry out. Again, in
Regulation v of 1831, efforts were made to check the alienation of
inams held by village and other officers, and in 1845 an order was
passed to stay devolution by adoption, and to limit private charitable
grants to existing lives. This last order created a disturbance.
Narasimha Reddi, a disappointed claimant of a poligar family
pension, secured a following among the “Kattubadi peons” of the
Ccded districts, who anticipated a resumption of their inams and
raised a rebellion in 1847. Troops had to be called out and some
months passed before Narasimha was caught in the hills and hanged.
The incident taught the need for caution, but it was impossible to
tolerate indefinitely the serious loss of revenue due to former fraud,
and the labour of investigating the incessant disputes which arose
over the innumerable assignments. A special commissioner was
therefore appointed in 1859 to deal with the whole question on liberal
lines, and an enormous number of inams were enfranchised in the
next ten years, the government surrendering its right to resume, claim
service, or restrain alienation in return for a quit-rent. There remain,
however, many inams which, for various reasons, it has not been
deemed proper to enfranchise.
The leading principle of ryotwari, that assessment depends on the
nature of the soil, not on that of the crop, though enunciated in a
1 Cons. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 (Selections, Madras, New Series, vol. mm).


## p. 51 (#81) ##############################################

IRRIGATION
51
9
draft regulation framed in 1817,4 did not receive effect until late in
the middle period when the special rates charged on “garden” lands
began to disappear, and the principle must always be subsidiary to
the primary division of cultivation into "dry" and "wet”. There is
clear justification for adopting the valuable rice-crop as the basis of
the assessment on wet land, seeing that it owes its existence to water
from public sources. Most of the irrigation is by “tanks” which vary
in size from mcre ponds to lakes covering over twenty square miles,
and which number in the ryotwari area nearly 32,000 (exclusive of
private reservoirs). Almost all the tanks antedate British acquisition
but, with the exception of the Grand Anikat (dam) on the Kaveri,
native works for the utilisation of river water are few and unimportant.
The principal English irrigation works are the Upper and Lower
Anikats on the Kaveri and Coleroon, the delta systems of the
Godavari and Kistna, and the Periyar dam. The genius of Sir Arthur
Cotton found its fullest scope on the Kaveri-Coleroon and Godavari.
The Kaveri-Coleroon works were begun in 1836 and, with the re-
modelled Grand Anikat, they provide water for nearly a million
acres. The Godavari dam, first suggested in 1798, was begun in 1846
and secures over half a million acres. Famine gave the impetus which
started in 1850 the almost equally extensive Kistna system. The
Periyar work is remarkable, not for the acreage served, but for diffi-
culties overcome in carrying out its bold conception. The idea
received the approval of “twelve intelligent men” deputed in 1798
by a raja of Ramnad, was condemned later, was revived in the 'sixties
and transformed into action in 1884. The dam, 176 feet high, was not
finished until 1895.
The origin of the Public Works Department which has done so
much for Madras is to be found in the engineering branch of the
Military Board established in 1786, but at first irrigation works were
in the hands of collectors who were later assisted by superintendents.
A Maramat (Repair) Department was instituted in 1819 under an
Inspector-General of Civil Estimates for whom was substituted later
the chief engineer in charge of the Military Board's engineering
department. The Maramat Department was placed under the general
control of the Board of Revenue in 1825, and was later organised
into divisions under civil engineers. The position as determined in
1845 was this: irrigation works, canals, civil buildings and minor
roads and bridges were under the Maramat Department; main roads
were under a Superintendent of Roads; military roads and buildings
and those in Madras town were under the Military Board. The
executive officers of the Maramat Department were the collectors and
their subordinates, over whom there was little professional super-
vision. The arrangements generally were strongly condemned by a
committee sitting in 1852 and six years later there came into being
1 Revenue Selections, 1820, vol. 1.
4-2


## p. 52 (#82) ##############################################

52
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a
the Public Works Department in its modern form, as an agency for
execution as well as supervision. The Maramat Department then
disappeared, but the new department was reorganised again and
again, the changes being mainly due to the difficulty in securing
effective management of the scattered smaller tanks. Finally, about
1882, there was a partial reversion to the old Maramat system, the
revenue officers being made responsible for the ordinary repairs to
minor tanks.
At the British acquisition, the poligars, within their dominions,
controlled the police and collected not only the revenue charged on
the land but also a variety of other taxes. In theory they may have
been regarded as mere agents of the Muhammadan government,
occupying for their palayams the same position as the renters held
outside the palayams and being remunerated by a commission on their
collections; in practice they were much more, collecting on their own
behalf, and disgorging only under compulsion. When, however, the
zamindari settlement came into operation, the government announced
its intention to assume direct control of the police and taxation, and
the history of the taxes concerned may now be traced into more
recent times.
The mohatarfa was a tax on trades and occupations. In any district
it might be levied on more than a hundred classes of persons or things
(for the implements of business were sometimes taxed), but its
incidence and rate were matters of arbitrary distinction and often
varied from village to village. “It is a poll-tax, a house-tax, a cattle-
stall-tax and a caste-tax. The beggar is taxed because he is a beggar;
the widow is taxed because she is destitute'--so it was said in 1842.
Though many of these demands had been abandoned, enough re-
mained to render mohatarfa a source of much oppression. The only
thing to be said for it is that, if, in 1852, a million persons contributed,
they did not contribute much. In some places the tax formed a rough
income-tax on the profits of trade. This form, called visabadi, was
brought under formal control by Regulation iv of 1818. The govern-
ment fixed the total demand on a district so as not to exceed 10 per
cent. of the estimated profits of the traders therein; the collector
divided this among the taluks and the contributors settled the
individual demands among themselves.
In Coimbatore one of the items of mohatarfa was tobacco. This was
first abolished, and then revived, as a separate source of revenue, in
1807, when the sale of tobacco was made a government monopoly in
Malabar and Canara. Soon afterwards all the cultivation of tobacco
there and in Coimbatore was prohibited except under licence. 2 There
were subsequent changes of system, but in every form the tax was
accompanied by fraud and "frightful abuses", while in Malabar
smuggling arose on so large and determined a scale that troops had
Reg. xxv of 1802.
2 Regs. vii and vin of 1811.
1


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MOHATARFA
53
a
to be employed to deal with it. The tobacco monopoly and its
accompaniments were abolished in 1852.
Embarrassments due to the Mutiny led to a general Indian income-
tax which was supplemented by a Licence Tax Act! abolishing the
mohatarfa tax and substituting a system of licences for carrying on
trades, industries and callings. This act disappeared in later legislative
shufflings, but, to make good the outlay on famine, the licensing
system was revived in Madras, and persons carrying on businesses
were required, if their incomes exceeded Rs. 200, to pay for licences
fixed sums varying roughly according to their receipts. 2 This licence
tax was a descendant of the mohatarfa. As an item of general taxation
it was displaced finally on the revival of the income-tax in 1886; but
the mohatarfa survives to this day in municipal areas in the form of a
graduated tax on arts, professions and callings.
The original mohatarfa was a bad enough tax, but the inland sayer was
far worse. This was a duty levied on articles of all sorts in transit and
had developed into a national calamity. The rates were variable and
capricious, there was no control over the tax-gatherers who charged
practically what they chose, and revenue renters and poligars took
to establishing posts and duties at pleasure, so that it was common
for
goods to come under charge at least once in every ten miles. The
injury to trade was mortal. This wicked impost was replaced in 1803
by frontier and town duties leviable ad valorem on specified goods
crossing the frontier or passing into selected towns. 3 Madras town
and the west coast came under separate rules which need not be
detailed. The duties were for a time collected by official agency, but
there was so much fraud that later the collection of the duties was
farmed out. 4 Even in the form finally taken by this impost, it could
not be otherwise than mischievous, and it was discontinued under
India Act VI of 1844.
Little need be said about the duties on sea-borne trade. They were
put on a basis of law in 1803;5 passed from the control of the Board of
Revenue to that of the Board of Trade in 1808;6 and were replaced
under the former authority in 1825. The duties on coastal trade were
abandoned in 1844, and in 1859? a uniform tariff was substituted for
the separate provincial rates theretofore levied.
In Muhammadan times the tax on salt took the form of a share of
the output of the salt pans, of a rent for privilege of manufacture, or of
a transit duty on leaving the factory. The Company established a
monopoly. 8 Manufacture and sale were placed under the direction
of a General Agent working under the Board of Revenue, but the
immediate management was in the hands of collectors. The govern-
ment fixed the price for sale to the public, while the agent settled the
1 India Act XVIII of 1861. 2 Act III of 1878.
• Reg. XII. Sec also amending and repealing Regs. xv of 1808 and 1 of 1812.
• Reg. v of 1821.
6 Regs. Ix and xi.
& Reg. xv.
, India Act VII.
8 Reg. 1 of 1805.


## p. 54 (#84) ##############################################

54 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
sites of factories and the amount to be made each year. Actual
manufacture was conducted by persons having a customary right to
make salt, their interests in the output being converted into cash
payments. The General Agent was soon got rid of, and the business
went on under the board, collectors and their assistants being re-
munerated for their trouble by a commission which lasted until 1836.
To relieve government of the position of sole vendor, and in the hope
of improving the quality of salt, an Excise Act was passed (VI of
1871). On the extension of this act to any place, the monopoly
system ceased to apply there, manufacture was permitted under
licence, an excise-duty became payable on removal from the place
of storage, and distribution and sale were left to private arrangement.
The monopoly was, however, retained in places as affording a means
of controlling the price. From the first there had been much com-
petition with the government salt through the manufacture in places
of coarse salt out of saline earths. There was long discussion over the
prevention of this practice which at times led to affrays with the
police, and it was made an offence in 1878. 1 In that year, too,
collectors ceased to be immediately concerned with the salt revenue,
a commissioner with a separate establishment taking over control. 2
Soon afterwards the Commissioner of Salt took charge of the Abkari
Department also, and in 1887 he became a member of the Board of
Revenue. In 1889 a new act replaced the old laws. This made
no material change, for it continued both the monopoly and the
excise system. There is also in vogue a third system under which
licensees for general sale (as opposed to licensces for sale to govern-
ment) can be required to deliver to government a specified quantity
before proceeding to manufacture for sale to the public. Since 1882
the rate of duty on salt has been determined for the whole country
by the Government of India. 3
The abkari tax, or tax on intoxicating liquors and drugs, is derived
mainly from arrack (distilled as a rule from palm-juice or crude sugar)
and toddy (fermented palm-juice). In continuing this old impost,
the English administrators asserted from the outset the principle that
consumption should be checked. The somewhat uncertain pursuit of
this ideal led through such a bewildering jungle of enactments, rules
and local practices, that the path taken can be indicated only roughly
here. Pursuant to old custom Regulation 1 of 1808 contemplated
leasing the right to make and sell arrack, but it also provided for the
licensing of single shops. The collector was responsible and received
a commission for his trouble. Later the law was extended to toddy 4
and an alternative system of direct official management was authorised.
In practice there was no effective limit to the number of retail shops.
These might be separately licensed, usually with a primitive still
1 Act II. Act VI of 1878.
: Act IV of 1889.
4 Reg. I of 1820.
India Act XII.


## p. 55 (#85) ##############################################

ABKARI
55
attached, or they might be opened under private arrangement with
the lessee of the rights of manufacture and sale over a large area.
Minimum sale-prices were prescribed but, as they had no relation to
strength, they had little effect in regulating consumption. The obvious
lack of control led in 1869 to measures for suppressing outstills and
concentrating manufacture in large distilleries. The contractor re-
ceived the monopoly of manufacture and supply for a large area, paid
stillhead duty, guaranteed a minimum revenue, agreed to observe
certain price-limits and was responsible for keeping down illicit
practices. The stillhead duty provided a means of controlling con-
sumption, but the system did not answer expectations and “free
supply" came in from 1884. Manufacture and supply were now
separated from sale; anybody could get a licence for a distillery,
arranging prices with the licensed vendors, and the government
undertook prevention. Later came the “contract distillery system
under which the sole privilege of manufacture and supply in a given
area is disposed of by tender, the successful tenderer having a mono-
poly of supply of his own liquor to retail vendors at rates fixed by
government and paying stillhead duty on all issues; the right of retail
vend is sold annually by separate shops. This is the prevailing system,
but in some parts the right of manufacture and sale is still rented out,
the number of stills being limited as much as possible, and the number
and sites of shops being fixed beforehand. The right to sell arrack has
long been separated from that to sell toddy. Fermented toddy is now
taxcd in the form of rents for retail shops and (in the greater part of
the presidency) by mcans of the tree-tax system under which a fixed
fee is charged for each tree which it is proposed to tap under
licence.
Act I of 1886 authorised the government to place abkari adminis-
tration under a commissioner, and the Commissioner of Salt was put
in charge of it. Since 1887 the commissioner of the two departments
has been a member of the Board of Revenue. Finally excise advisory
committees, containing a non-official element, were instituted to
advise as to the 'location of shops.
The withdrawal from the poligars of authority over the police was
the most important abridgment of their powers effected by Regu-
lation xxv of 1802, but the discharge of the kavalgars (watchers) and
the resumption of many of their inams had unexpected results.
Deprived of responsibility and emoluments, the kavalgars, who were
largely recruited from criminal tribes, had no inducement to restrain
the activities of their follow-castemen. Though no longer recognised
by the government, they continued to receive fees from the villagers
and became interıncdiaries in a vast system of blackmail from which
the southern districts have never been able to shake themselves free.
The tribesmen stcal (cattle as a rule), the owner approaches the
* In Tinnevelly district, in 1866, there were 3642 stills, and there had been more.


## p. 56 (#86) ##############################################

56
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
>
kavalgar, restoration is arranged on terms, and the ransom is shared
between the kavalgar and the thieves.
The kavalgars had been at first succeeded by police darogas and
thanadars, operating, as in Bengal, greatly to their own advantage,
under the nominal supervision of the sedentary zillah judges. A reform,
inspired mainly by Munro, was introduced by Regulations ix and XI
of 1816. The general control was now vested in the collector as
magistrate. The principal executive officers were the tahsildars, under
the title "heads of police”, and all the members of their revenue
establishments, clerks and peons, were at their disposal for police
work. The prime agents of detection were the village watchers acting
under the village headmen and accountants. But time revealed
defects in this plan also. The superior revenue officers became more
immersed in their growing revenue duties; opportunities for mischief
by underlings were doubled by their dual capacity. Crime, gang-
robbery in particular, reached alarming proportions in some places.
The report of the Torture Commission of 1855 rendered change
imperative. The commission found torture to be a “time-honoured
institution" and spoke of "that perfect but silent machinery which
combines the forces of revenue demands and police authority”; wit-
nesses did not hesitate to speak of the police as “the bane and pest
of society". The force was now reconstituted on English and Irish
lines. 1 Direct control by the district magistrate disappeared and the
connection with the Revenue Department was sundered. The ad-
ministration was vested in an inspector-generala assisted by deputies.
The village watcher was retained. Each district was supplied with
European officers as superintendents and assistants. This system has
stood the test of time, which is not to say that the personnel does not
admit of improvement.
In natural sequence we come to the jails. Such institutions had
been unknown before British rule, and for a long time afterwards any
strong building was deemed suitable for the purpose. In these the
death-rate generally exceeded 100 per mille. 3 The rules of health
were not understood; floggings for breach of discipline were too
severe and frequent; still worse, perhaps, the system of paying daily
subsistence allowances to prisoners meant that catering was left to
jailors who made all they could out of it.