MORE WHOLESALE OVER-STATEMENTS

497

That seems clear enough. It does not seem possible, with such details, to go wrong. Take the acreage, and multiply it by the number of lbs., and you have the yield. It would not be safe to do this in the present instance, for, on page 371 of the same publication, the yield in tons for the whole province for three years is given, as well as the acreage. A few columns of figures supply much food for thought:

The average for the whole period was 372 lbs. per acre (6 bushels) per annum. Had the tables of averages, professedly taken from selected fields, been realised, the yield would have been over-estimated on the whole period by thirty-four per cent., in some years by fifty per cent., and in one year by over seventy per cent. Such contradictory statements make an undoubted acceptance of the conclusions put forward by the Viceroy, when speaking in Council even, altogether impossible. Continual and close examination is always essential in respect to Indian statistical statements.

The story of the condition of these Provinces, as revealed in the secret economic inquiry of 1881-82, may now be considered. The region is almost wholly agricultural. Such income as is not derivable from the cultivation of the soil must be of little account. In an area as large as Italy there are only five towns with a

population exceeding 30,000 each, while aggregations of people ten thousand and more in number are only sixteen. 'Agriculture affords the immediate means of support of almost the entire population, and it is on the agricultural condition of the Provinces that the well-being of the inhabitants as a whole depends.' In 1882 it was considered that the provinces were exceptionally favoured by the comparative certainty of the rainfall. The soil is so exceptional that it will give good return to an amount of labour which applied to most other soils would be entirely infructuous. Wheat lands seldom receive more than two ploughings before they are sown. The lightness of the Government revenue is notorious. . . . The development of railway communication has taken place subsequently to the fixation of the present revenue demand, and the State has as yet had no share in the enormous increase of agricultural profits which has accrued from the connection of the Narbada valley and the Nagpore country with the port of Bombay.'

'It is a natural inference,' the Chief Commissioner, in addressing the Government of India, says, 'that in the Central Provinces the profits from agriculture are larger, and the cultivating classes in more comfortable circumstances than is the case in many other parts of India, and that this is the fact is the opinion of all officers who have had an opportunity of contrasting the rural conditions of these Provinces with those obtaining in the more thicklypopulated districts of Upper India.'

A few spots on the bright sun of these alleged comparatively wealthy Provinces are admitted by the official apologists, e.g., the law courts are ruinous to the suitors, the moneylenders are extortionate rogues, and the hill tribes are too little clothed, and have too little to eat The conclusion is this:

There is no doubt in these Provinces a great deal of poverty, but there is very little distress. The people are well fed, and the only section of them who can be said to be hard pressed for bare subsistence are the hill tribes,

LESS THAN ONE FARTHING EACH PER DAY 499

who are but little more provident than the beasts of the forests, and have to undergo similar vicissitudes in daily food. The volume of wealth is rapidly increasing, and there is no lack of employment for those who wish for it. If only more of the money which the Provinces are receiving reached the producers, and less was intercepted by moneylenders and middlemen, the condition of the people might be described as prosperous. But over them hangs the grip of the usurer, and the shadow of the civil courts.' The indebtedness, apparently, was very great. 'Out of twenty-three whose circumstances were investigated in detail, eighteen owed money' (p. 49). Out of fourteen tenants, eleven were in debt-£346 in all.' 'Eleven

tenants reported on were all in debt-£362' (p. 55). 'Out of 1,847 tenants, 1,588 were in debt, and the Tahsildar of Burhunpur estimates that at least nine out of ten of the tenantry of the Tahsil are in involved circumstances' (p. 60).

Then, the people can exist-if existence it can be called -on almost nothing. 'The most instructive fact brought out by inquiries into the condition of five families of the labourer class was the extraordinary cheapness of a bare subsistence. A Baiga basket-maker, whose family consisted of his wife and two small children, made, on an average, twelve baskets a week, which he sold for 2 lbs. of unhusked rice or small millet, each. His monthly earnings were thus about 100 lbs. of unhusked rice, worth rather less than a rupee. The family not only managed to live on this, supplemented with jungle fruits and roots, but saved annually about a rupee's worth of grain, wherewith they purchased the scanty clothing which sufficed for them.' This should be, as it probably is, the world's record in cheap living! The average works out thus:

Total earnings in food per annum
Less, saving for clothing

Leaving for food

...

16s.

...

...

1s.

15s.

This was to be divided amongst four persons, and

leaves 3s. 9d. each for fifty-two weeks, or less than half of ONE FARTHING each person per day! That is, when unhusked rice can be obtained at 100 lbs. for 1s. 4d. But, in 1882, the year in question, common rice was selling at Jubbulpur 32 lbs., at Nagpore 33 lbs., and at Raipur at 64 lbs. per rupee. Let it be remembered this is an official statement concerning an inhabitant in what was then supposed to be the richest Province in the Empire.

Of the Raipur district it is said there could be no clearer indication of the easy conditions of life in the Chhatisgarh division than was furnished in 1886, when the rice crop was barely a quarter out-turn. The people did without relief from Government. Yet, in 1900, on the second famine within a few years occurring, that very district gained an eminence reached by no other district in India -forty per cent. of its population were, at one time, on Government relief.

These Provinces, according to the accounts freely given, and as freely (and as falsely) repeated to-day, were highly prosperous. Yet, when the shock of famine assailed them, the highly prosperous' people died by the hundred thousand.

FAMINE MORTALITY RESULTS OF 1897 AND 1900.

Thus, in what was alleged in 1882 to be the most pros

perous part of the Empire, scarcity and famine demand so terrible a total of human victims.

NO CAUSE FOR ANXIETY WHATEVER' 501

ASSAM.

Of this fertile region in Eastern India, Mr. Darrah concludes an examination of the condition of the Chief Commissionership, by saying:

(a) The revenue is collected with ease everywhere but in Sylhet, and scarcely any arrears remain over after the close of the official year. In Sylhet, where the assessment is lightest of all, the difficulty is due to the litigious character of the people, not to their poverty. The Sylhetia has the strongest objection to paying his revenue, and exhausts all the resources of subtilty to avoid doing so. The people of Assam Proper are much simpler, and, having the money at hand, pay it with readiness.

(b) Every district possesses extensive areas of culturable waste, consisting largely of grass land, which could be reclaimed with comparative ease. In other words, the land available is far in excess of the population. Therefore, it is impossible that there should be the slightest difficulty as to the means of subsistence.

(c) Beggars are almost unknown in the Province. I have only seen one during a residence of four years and tours in every district but the Gáro and Nága Hills.

(d) Coolie transport is not to be obtained by Government anywhere but in the Khasi Hills without impressment. It is impossible to associate the idea of poverty with a people who cannot be induced to work voluntarily for Government at even more than the ordinary rates paid by private persons.

(e) Regular employers of labour are compelled to import at very serious cost the labour they require. This is the difficulty which has from the beginning so prejudicially affected the tea industry of Assam. There can be no want of the means of subsistence amongst a people who by refusal to work oblige the planter to import his labour at an initial cost sometimes exceeding Rs.100 a head.'

The Chief Commissioner affirmed this in these emphatic terms: 'The conclusion, I am to say,' remarked Mr. Daukes, Officiating Secretary, in the letter to the Government of India, at which Mr. Fitzpatrick arrives, on a careful consideration of the materials before him, is that, so far as the Province under his administration is concerned, the question raised in your letter need cause the Government no anxiety whatever.'

Note on the Condition of the People of Assam,' p. 25, Econ. Inq.