year. The economy thus effected in the cost of Settlements has been estimated1 to have already secured a saving of two hundred lakhs of rupees; and it is likely to realize, in the future, an annual saving of from twelve to sixteen lakhs.

§ 2. The Provincial Departments.

In order to emphasize the importance of that part of the scheme which is directed to perfecting, and keeping correct, the Agricultural and Land-Records, it was officially determined that the heads of the Provincial Departments should be called Directors of Land-Records and Agriculture?' The departments have many other duties which I cannot here describe, and which, of course, must vary according to the requirements and local conditions of the several provinces. The conduct of agricultural experiments, the care of veterinary schools, and model farms (where these exist), are among the most obvious 3.

The Resolution of the Government of India (8th December, 1881, on Agricultural Departments) concludes :

'The views of the Government of India may be summed up by saying that the foundation of the work of an Indian Agricultural Department should be the accurate investigation of facts, with a view of ascertaining what administrative course is necessary to preserve the stability of agricultural operations.

1 See the Finance Members' Budget Speech (1888) in the Gazette of India. The lakh, I may remind English readers, is 100,000,-a lakh of rupees is £10.000 conventionally, i.e. if the rupee is two shillings.

2 Resolution Government of India) Financial No. 608, dated 9th February, 1887.

The establishment of Agricultural Departments had not long proceeded before a financial inquiry was made as to whether they would be successful. Fortunately, this has resulted in a satisfactory verdict. But, in fact, these Departments are defensible in the highest degree, on their own merits. The District Officer' has, by the legislation of

the last twenty years, had an almost continually increasing burden thrown upon him; and the LandRecords Department gave sorelyneeded relief and help in a matter of peculiar importance. In discussing the financial question, such a consideration is necessarily left out of sight; but if the Agricultural Departments resulted in less saving than is actually the case, the enormous good done by the improvement of land records would amply justify their existence. I know of no one administrative measure of greater benefit to the country than the establishment of these Departments.

The primary efforts of the Department should. . . be devoted to the organization of agricultural inquiry, which has been shown to comprise the duties of gauging the stability of agricultural operations in every part of a province, of classifying the areas of the province according to the results of careful investigation, and of deciding what method of administrative treatment is suitable to each so as to maintain agricultural operations at the highest standard of efficiency possible under present conditions. . . . From a system . . . of inquiry thus conducted will follow the gradual development of agricultural improvement.'

SECTION XIII-REFORM IN PROCEDURE FOR

RE-SETTLEMENTS.

The establishment of Agricultural and Land-Record Departments, it is hardly too much to say, alone rendered the real simplification of the Settlement work of the present and future possible.

Already, by Resolution in October 18811, the Government of India had called attention to the fact that when the Settlements fell in, it did not follow that a re-settlement, in any shape, was to be undertaken as a matter of course. The sanction of the Government of India was required to new Settlement operations; and it was to be considered, in all cases, whether any such increase in the revenue was probable as would make it worth while to undertake them. Four points were especially to be noted the probable cost of the operations, the time they would take, the increment of revenue expected, and the incidence of the existing revenue on the individual landholders.

If there could be no increase (or less than one which represented a profitable rate of interest on the total anticipated expenditure), revision should ordinarily not be

No. 144, dated 4th October, 1881. It did not apply to the Governments of Bombay and Madras; though of

course similar principles would be recognized in those presidencies.

undertaken, unless, indeed, a revision was needed because of the inequality of incidence of the last assessment.

§ 1. New System of Land Records and their
Maintenance.

But this 'Resolution' only touched the fringe of the subject. The whole question of re-settlements, and the means of reducing their cost, and depriving them of all their inconveniences to the district population, is one of such importance that it is desirable to explain at some length how the work of the Land-Record Departments affects it. The sketch given in preceding sections will have shown how very gradually the work of assessment has been reduced to a method, or rather to different methods, suited to the varying circumstances of each province. There remained still the difficulty that, however 'scientific' the method, hitherto the work of a new Settlement has been very costly and very troublesome; and the more elaborate the method, the more costly and prolonged the operations. The difficulty arose from the fact that it has hitherto been unavoidable, in making a Settlement, to have a special staff of Surveyors and Settlement Officers, with all their subordinates and office staff, to record facts, compile statistics, fair out records, and so forth. Such a staff, in the nature of things, during the whole of its stay, harasses the people not a little 1, and it upsets all the regular work in 'tahsils' and of the kánúngos and patwárís. But suppose that at last the work is at an end; the Settlement records are all faired out and bound in volumes, and the maps mounted; the originals are deposited in the Collector's Revenue Record Office; the copies disposed of at the tahsíl and in the patwárí's office or 'patwár-khána' in the village. How soon these records, correct as they may have been at a given

1 To say nothing of the petty demands that subordinate officials always make when they are in camp, in the shape of supplies, grass, firewood, and such like; even if the foolish landholders do not think it

necessary to pay fees and douceurs to secure more or less imaginary benefits. It is impossible wholly to prevent such things, when the entire population practises and tolerates them.

date, cease to correspond with facts! New fields are added to the cultivated area out of the waste; old fields change shape or boundary; they are aggregated or divided. New wells are sunk, new roadways are substituted for old ones, and many other such changes take place. Then, again, proprietors are continually altering; a certain number of sales are notified, and the usual applications for mutation of names are made and allowed; but whether the fact has ever found its way into any such record that the Settlement list could be corrected, is another matter. The result of all this (and much more could be said if space permitted) is that, hitherto, when the thirty years (let us suppose) of Settlement expired, the whole of the records, prepared originally with so much care, have proved out of date, and more or less useless. There is, then, nothing for it but to re-survey the whole area, and to make out fresh maps and records, putting the whole district once more-for several years-into the state of unrest already described, to the great detriment of agriculture, as well as of administrative and social well-being.

If only the separate records could be abolished; if only a certain set of necessary papers-the large scale-map showing every field and every detail of the estate, the indexregister to this; the list of proprietors, their shares and interests, and the revenue they pay; the list of tenants and their rents; and any such supplemental statistics as local rules might require,-if only these could be placed in the hands of a village patwárí, tested and signed as correct up to a given date, viz. the commencement of a new Settlement; and if thenceforward these maps and statements could be continually corrected, fresh fields plotted in, and statements periodically recopied and kept up to date; when the term of Settlement expired, the 'Record-of-rights' would be found as correct and conformable to facts as when it began. Then the Collector himself, or perhaps a specially-deputed officer, could soon make out the necessary schedules for revising the assessment, and the 're-settlement' would be

over.

But to secure such an ideal procedure, several things are necessary. First, the staff of village patwárís and inspecting kánúngos must be well taught and made competent to do the survey work that the maintenance of village maps involves. Next, their work must be continually inspected, tested, and corrected, till the machine works without friction and failure.

Next, the rules for assessment, applicable to future revisions, must be reduced to the greatest simplicity.

The first of the steps above indicated has everywhere been taken. Schools have been opened for the instruction of patwárís and their sons in surveying and other necessary branches of education. The whole staff has been graded and organized, and rules made for its appointment and control.

Speaking generally, each patwárí has a circle of three or four villages, and the inspecting officers or kánúngos are continually moving about and testing the measurements and the accuracy of entries in the books made by the patwárí. There is also what is called a Registrar kánúngo, at the head-quarters of the tahsil or local subdivision, who keeps the books and compiles the village returns into corresponding subdivisional returns. To give a general idea of how the village staff is manned and supervised, it may be mentioned that in the North-West Provinces (excluding Oudh) the number of patwárís is about 20,000, the field inspectors or kánúngos number 450, or one to every 45 patwárís. The average area of a patwári's circle is 1,130 acres (cultivated), so that the local inspecting officer looks after above 50,000 cultivated acres; the whole establishment costs somewhat more than 23.75 lakhs of rupees, the reorganized establishments and their supervision costing about two lakhs more than the old establishment of patwárís and kánúngos.

It will be seen, then, how this improvement will increasingly render possible the greatest reform of all in re-settlement operations,-namely, the carrying out of revision operations without an elaborate re-valuation of