THE MONEYLENDER THE ONLY SAVIOUR 347 Years The Government of Bombay are without excuse. ago the agricultural condition of the Presidency was laid before them in vivid, striking, and convincing facts.1 Then, as now (though worse now than then), an unhappy condition of indebtedness existed, and the Government was almost as much dependent upon the good-will of the moneylender as it is now. But for the moneylender the Bombay Government, notwithstanding the comparatively important industries within its borders, would have been bankrupt in fact, as it is now bankrupt in effect, but that the creditor, the much-abused moneylender, holds his hand. Let the reader observe the pregnant facts given in the passages now to be cited, and observe also that no notice whatsoever was taken of so alarming a presentment of a perilous position. Mr. Joshi wrote: Shortly, we may sum up the result under this first head of causes thus: (1) The Survey Tenure with its thirty years' settlements allows only a limited measure of property in land and proprietary security. (2) Only thirty-five per cent. of our Survey occupants enjoy this restricted security of tenure; and (3) The rest (sixty-five per cent.) of our cultivators are for all practical purposes a vast rack-rented cottier tenantry, without interest in their lands, holding on a precarious tenure and living in a hopeless condition of destitution. And thus as far as the bulk of our cultivators are concerned the result may be stated in the words of Sir G. The Quarterly Journal of the Poona People's Association' (Sarvajanik Sabha), 'Note on Agriculture in Bombay,' written by Mr. G. V. Joshi, B.A., Headmaster, Sholapore High School, and read at an Industrial Conference held on September 14, 1894. Wingate thus: 'The Ryot toils that another may rest and sows that another may reap'-a situation utterly devoid of all inducement to exertion or prudence. Even the upper thirty-five per cent. occupants, though still free from embarrassments, are beginning to share, through various causes, in the general insecurity of the position. Here, then, we reach a basal fact of the utmost importance, which largely accounts for the existing situation. Condemned to work for others like a slave, the Ryot fails; and what chance has he of success? The stimulus of self-interest is wanting, and all incentives to good work are taken away from him. And yet, let it be said to his credit, no farmer in the world could stand the pressure better. No wonder if the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act, the most expansive measure passed in recent years, has failed to bring relief to the Deccan Ryot. Clearly, no mere change of judicial procedure could be an effective cure for an economic evil. (2) But, again, there is yet another cause to deepen the Ryot's despair. His income-never large and ever uncertain owing to the variations of the seasons-is fast going down under the increasing double pressure of (a) public taxes (b) and debt. (a) As regards public taxation. Public taxation, to which the Ryot is the chief contributor, is steadily growing with the growing needs of a progressive administration, and the weight falls upon him with peculiar pressure. The general revenues during the last twenty years show an advance from £6,366,667 to £9,133,334, or thirty-nine per cent. (the Land Revenue twenty-two per cent.), and assuming that the Ryot's share in the public burdens is seventy-five per cent., this increase of Revenue means a net increase to the State demand upon him of £1,333,334 a year. His corn-heap, however has been continually falling away, and is just now at a minimum point, barely enough for his living, and his despair can be conceived when he is called upon to pay £1,333,334 more of public taxation. Enhancement of public burdens instead of spurring him on to increased exertions, as the advocates of the Ryot's indolent-nature theories imagine, only plunges him deeper in debt and despondency. (b) But the Ryot's narrowing margin of means is further, and to a more alarming extent, encroached upon from another quarter. His debts are growing and the moneylender presses him harder than ever. With his 93 PER CENT. OF LAND REVENUE BORROWED 349 diminishing corn-heap, he can, even in average years, hardly pay his taxes and rentals and live without borrowing. His necessities in this respect are often imperative. The oscillations of the seasons, the pressure of public burdens, domestic requirements, and various other 'accidents of circumstance,' leave him no alternative but to often go to the moneylender and borrow. And borrow he must, in the absence of cheaper banking facilities, on ruinous terms. In the Deccan districts, his annual borrowings average about £353,334 a year, or ninety-three per cent. of the total assessment. Applying these yearly averages to the Presidency : Land Revenue, £1,959,934, 93 per cent.: = £1,822,667, the amount of the Ryot's yearly borrowing. On the basis of the figures given above the Ryot's annual debts in the Presidency may be estimated at roughly, £1,666,667-and taking the average rate of interest on secured and unsecured debts at twelve per cent., his annual interest payment on account of annual debts comes up to £200,000. Nor is this all. The pressure of old debts is excessive. On the basis of Mr. Woodburn's figures for nine districts1 giving on an average £1 17s. 4d. of old debt per head of the population, the total of such debt for the whole Presidency might be put at about £15,000,000, on which the annual interest charge at twelve per cent. amounts to £3,600,000. Woodburn's data it is £3,733,334. On Mr. Applying these proportions to the Presidency :— Population, 15,985,000 at £1 17s. Od. per head. Putting together both debts, annual and old, the interest charge to the Ryot at twelve per cent. seems to come to close on £4,000,000 a year. Were he only able to borrow on easier terms-say at five or six per cent., what a relief it would be to him! His pressure would be brought down by £2,000,000, and on this account of interest charge alone, and he would be placed ---in seventy-five per cent. of cases-in a solvent position. However, he has no such means of relief. His personal credit is as good as ever, and his sturdy honesty of heart which leads him cheerfully to bear his load of debt and makes the very idea of going into insolvency revolting to his mind, is appreciated even by the sowkar; and he can That is to say, on the basis of the official figures. £15,000,000 OF OLD DEBT' 351 borrow even in the worst Deccan villages small sums on personal security. Nor is there lack of capital in the country, as pointed out last year by the Hon. Mr. Justice Ranade in his paper on Real Credit Re-organisation.' £1,866,667 are locked up in the Savings Banks in this Presidency, and presumably, a still larger amount in Government securities, and any rate of interest, judging from the recent conversion operations, would seem to satisfy our depositors and holders of Promissory Notes. All this money, and much more, would be, and ought to be, at the service of industrial enterprise but for want of a via media. The divorce between capital and land and industrial enterprise is almost complete, and this divorce has been the ruin both of the Ryot and his industry. There is almost an impassable gulf-the gulf of ignorance, and want of confidence and habits of combined effort-between those who save and those who work, a bar preventing the free flow of capital to fertilise the fields of industry, and the State which alone with its limitless command of resource and organisation is in a position to bridge over the gulf and remove the bar, still declines to undertake the work, and the deadlock continues, with disastrous results to the progress of industry. So far as the Ryot is concerned, he has to pay twelve to twenty-four per cent. interest to the moneylender, while a Savings Bank depositor is content with little more than three per cent., and has thus to pay £4,000,000 nearly to his sowkar year after year, where he ought not to pay more than £1,333,333 or £2,000,000. The consequence is, that this £2,000,000 or £2,666,667, which might otherwise go to his acres, pass into other hands, and no one is any the better for it, and every one much the worse for such diversion of the Ryot's savings, not even excluding the moneylender who suffers by the general paralysis thereby caused. The State withholds the needful help; the Ryot suffers, and with him the whole nation shares the penalty in the depression of its one surviving industry. In another respect again, the absence of cheap banking facilities is causing inconvenience. It largely tends to neutralise the effect of much of the protective legislation of the past twenty years. Taking the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act, we find that while, on the one hand, during the past thirteen years the Act has been in operation, the courts and conciliators have together |