CHAPTER XVI

Assessment circles and circle rates

300.     Wide diversities of agricultural conditions in most districts. - A Settlement Officer making a general survey of one of the submontane districts may find below the hills a rough country seamed with revines. As he marches southward the uneven land may pass gradually into a wide plain of good easily worked one to be succeeded in its turn perhaps by stretches of stiff clay. On lasm side the plain drop abruptly or in a long slope of broken land into the valley of one of the great rivers, part of which may now be beyond the reach of ordinary floods, while the remainder is subject to all the vicissitudes of fortions which the vagaries of a Punjab river involve. The plain above the valley may be record with the sandy beds of hill torrents, dry in the winter, but spilling over a wide area in the summer rains, droppoing here sand, there rich loam and finally, when all the good silt has been lost, making the flooded land stiff and untraceable by deposits of fine mud. The river valley and the belts of land along the hill streams may present a great variety of soils, perplexing becuase of the abruptness with which one passes into another, and the doubt whether existing conditions may not undergo speedy improvement or deterioration. In most of the ditricts at a distance from the hills physical cahnges are less rapid, but the country can still be divided into a few tracts of widely different character. The Settlement Officer will not only find that the natural aspect of the country and the quality of equally striking changes in the rainfull and the depth of the subsoil water. He will soon re-energy of the people, and that the various tribes of landwoners also possess a very unequal vironment. All these things combined - soil, rainfall, depth of water, climate, and the vator of canal - produce notable variations in the agriculture of the different tracts. The amount of irrigation, the high or low style of farming, the crops sown and the certainly of their yeilding a harvest, nearly everything in fact on which the amount of reveneue which land can pay depends, spring from these causes.

 

301.     Necessity of assessment circles. - No set of rates could be devised which would be of any use in assessing all the villages of a district. This is one reason for making Settlement Officers draw up proposal for each tahsil separately, but there are few, if any, tahsils which it is wisw to treat as units for rating purpose. If after weighting the matters referred to above the Settlement Officer can break up the country with which he is dealing into more or less homogeneous block, the estates in each of which have, with many individual peculiarities, a strong general likeness as regards the chief factors affecting the value of land, his own task in devising a fair assessment will be much assisted, rates can framed as general guides, and the scrutiny of the assessment proposal by controlling authoriteis will be greatly simplified. Such blocks or gourps of villages are known assessment circles. As noticed in paragraph 227 the division of the tract under settleent into assessment circles is one of the matters on which the Settlement Officer must obtain the orders of the Financial Commissioner at any early stage of his proceedings. If further knowledge shows theat the original proposals were faulty, he should not hesitate to suggest their amendment at any stage of settlement. It is important that the next Settlement Officer should find the statistical information referred to in the next chapter tabulated according to circles which he himself can accept. It must also be remebered that assessment circles are not only useful to Settlement Officers, but ought to be so defined as to aid Deputy Commissionera in the ordinary revenue management of the district, and especially in the matter of land revenue collections.

 

302.     Assessment circles and circle rates. - An assessment circle then is a group of estates sufficiently homogeneous to admit of a common set of rates being used as a general guide in calculating the demands which can fairly be imposed upon them. This does not imply that the revenue of each village shall be the exact product of the application to its lands of the sanctioned circle rates. The general similarity which will admit of a single set of rates as a guide is quite compatible with difference leading in individual case to greater or less divergence from them in actual assessment. But such a detviation must be justified by reasons to be recorded in the village note-book, and if it amounts in any estate to as much as 20 per cent, the Settlement Officer must give a special explanation of the divergence in the detailed village assessment statement submitted to the Financial Commissioner (see paragraph 522). The rates should bring out the demand considered suitable for the whole circle within a margin of 3 per cent, either way of the demand approved of by Government.

 

303.     Change of policy as regards the size of assessment circles. - As noticed in the last chapter it was usual in the earlier Punjab settlements to form a larger number of circles than is now deemed necessary, and inside these circles to group villages supposed to possess similar revenue-paying capacity in classes for each of which a separate set of rates was framed. In some settlements very big circles have been adopted in accordance with the view advocated by the late Colonel Wace as part of his general policy of simplifying in every possible way the work of the patwari and kanuugo staff both during and after settlement. It is to be feared that the reduction of the number of circles has in some instances been carried too far.

 

304.     Objections to very small circles. - The plan of having very small circles is  undoubtedly open to criticism. It increase the labour of reporting assessment for approval and of maintaining annual returns after settlement. It is liable to the more serious objection that it prevents a Settlement Officer from taking a wide enough view of his subject and encourages a machanical application of rates without sufficient regard to the circumstances of individual estaes. The conclusion to be drawn from statistics becomes more reliable when the area to which the figures relate is fairly large, for in that case accidental and temporary aberrtions on this side or that to great extent neutralize one another.

 

305.     Very large circles, when inconveninet. - No fault can be found with very large circles if the natural features and the rainfall of the country produced a broad equality of condition over a wide area. But if estates which are in no sense homogeneous are grouped together, the simplicty which results is only anotehr name fro confusion. An examination of the different villages and a study of their statistics produce no distinct impression regarding the circle as a whole the picture is blurred by a mass of inconsistent details and the Settlement Officer's work is reduced to a village by village assessment, which may be excellent in itself, but which he cannot justify to himself or to others by any general arguments. The rates are in no true sense assessment guides; they are merely the averages deduced from the sum of the village assessments.

 

306.     Proper  policy. - A middle course is the best. In grouping estates into circles attention should be steadily directed to those matters which must have a marked effect on the pitch of the assessment or on revenue management by the Deputy Commissioner, and small points of difference should be neglected. Where the existing classification is too minute it will genearlly be possible to reatin the old circies unbroken, merely clubbing them together in larger groups. It is not worthwhile to make small changes simply because a more symmetrical arrangement could be obtained by moving as estate here and there from one group to another. The Settlement Officer has power in his village assessment to make the existence of small inequilities harmless. If the old circles are broken up much trouble arises from the necessity of retabulating past statistics from the village note-books stead of taking the figures straingt from the circle registers. But where great changes have been brought about be the action of rivers or torrents, or by the introdcution of a new means of irrigation, it may be necessary to face in inconvenience involved in a redical construction of assessment cirlces, the Settlement Officer should also consider the desirability of the formation of urban assessment circles under sub-section (4) of section 51 the Land Revenue Act 1887. His proposals in this connection should be submitted through the Commissioner for the approval of the Financial Commissioner. Draft notifications for publication, declaring the areas as urban assessment circles, in case they have not alreday been so declared, should be forwarded at the same time.

 

CHAPTER XVII

Assessment Statistics

307.     Village, assesment circle, and tahsil revenue registers. - It was one of the chief objects of the reorganization of the land record agency effected in 1885 that Settlement Officer should have ready to hand in a convenient form a continuous record of statistics which could be utlilized as assessment data (see paragraph 82). A Settlement Officer of the present day finds most of the statistical information he requires in the village assessment circle and tahsil revenue register, and the time and labour are saved which were formerlyt spent in compiling elaborate special assessment returns.1[1] A description of the contents of these registers will be found in the Land Administration Manual, Chpater XI. The abstract village note-books will be found useful. Each Settlement Officer should report before he finishes his work whether the form in use is suited to the district. It ought to present in a striking way the data which will help the Deputy Commissioner to decide whether a suspension of revenue is needed in any particular harvest, or whether on the which the revenue registers contain are the crop returns. Settlement Officers have now in many cases a failry accurate record of the harvests of past years in each estate, which no amount of diligence could obtain for them under the old system. Men will certainly wonder in future that village assessments were made with any measure of success, when no trustworthy information regarding so vital a matter existed. It is necessary when a tract is being reassessed to supplement the information respecting rents and land transfer to be found in the registers by drawing up village lists of rents, mortgages and sales in the forms given in Appendix IX.

 

CHAPTER XVIII

The Standard of Assessment, Net Assets and Rents

308.     The standard for assessment of a proporation of the net assets. - The preamble to the first Punjab Land Revenu Act, XXXIII of 1871, declares that "the Government of India is by law entitled to a proportion of the produce of land of the Punjab to be from time to time fixed by itself.1[2] The English Governemnt inhertited his claim, which is really rounded on immemorial custom, from the native rulers whom it replaced. The principle being admitted, the question at once arises how this proportion is to be fixed. Obviously it would be unfair to take in all cases the same fraction of the gross produce. Two plots of land of equal size may yield exactly the smae amount of wheat, but in one case the crop, fovoured by a fertile soil and an abundant rainfall, may be raised at the cost of little labour and money, while in the other it may be result of laborious tillage and the expenditure of capital on deep wells and the costly cattle required to work them. Native rulers met the difficulty in a rough and ready fashion by varying the share of the produce demanded according to the character of the soil and rainfall, and sometimes by allowing sepcial excemption in the case of wells. The same result is reached by making the standard of assessment a fixed proportion, not of the gross produce or gross assets, but of the "net produce" or "net assets". The last phrase is defined in the settlement instuctions (see rule 6 of the Instuctions of 1893, revised in 1914, in Appendix I) as follows :- "The net assets of an creat mean the average surplus which the estate may yield after deduction of the expenses of cultivation. A full fair rent paid by a tenant-at-will, though sometimes falling short of the net assets, may genearlly, in practice and for purpose of assessment, be taken as a sufficiently near approximation to them on th eland for which it is paid.' The definition adopted in the amending Act and now incorporated in the Land Revenue Act as clause 18 of section 3 is identical. The net assets also include any income which the proprietors derive from the spontaneous products of their waste and cultivated lands, and strictly, speaking, any dues of whatever sort which they get in their capacity of land-owners.

 

309.     Assesment must not exceed one-fourth net assets. - The successive steps by which the Government share of the net assets has been reduced from five-sixth to one-foruth have been shown in Chapters III and VI2[3]. A Settlment Officer should enquire what the "full fair rent" of an assessment circle would be if it were all cultivated by tenants-at-will not holding the land on specially favourable terms. If he can determine what is a "full fair rent" rate for each class of land in as assessment circle in the case of fields held by ordinary tenants-at-will, he can, for the purpose of calculating the assessment, assume a rental for the whole assessment circle by applying the rates not only to the area in the possession of tenants-at-will, but also to the areas cultivated by the owners themselves or by privileged tenants, and 25 per cent of this rental and of the net income from miscellaneous sources will be the highest revenue which he can impose. In future "rental of an estate" and "net assets of an estate" will be used as synonymous tersm.

 

330.     The net assets estimate must be honestly framed. - It is admitted in the instructions [(see rule 6, appendix I (D)"] that the process of determining the net assets of an estate is in, Punjab genearlly very difficult, and that in case in which the bulk of the land is cultivated by the petty proprietors themselves "the calculation, becomes not only difficulty but hypotetical, and the results of greater uncertainty and less value." Could we, more over, calculate with perfect accuracy the standard assessment, many circumstances might convince us of the prudence of foregoing a part of it when fixing the revenue demand. This is implied in the fourth of the rules of 1893 revised in 1914 [(appendix I (D)]. Which after asserting the claim of Government to a share of the produce of the land to be fixed by itself, adds - The exact share to be taken is a question to be settled separately for each tract and estate under assessment according to the circumstances of the case," and also in rule 7 - "The assessment of an estate will be fixed according to circumstances, but must exceed one-half the value of the net assets." This limit of assessment for particular esates has now bheen modified and the standard of assessment for assessment circle reduced. But the main principles determining the pitch of assessment in relation oto the net assets still apply. Neither the admitted difficulty of determining the true rental nor the fact that the circumstances of the tract under settlement seem to him to make it expedient to deviate pretty widely from the theoretical standard in actual assessment absolves a Settlment Officer from the duty of framing the most carefull estimate possible of the net assets. It is dishonest to manipulate the estimate in any way with a view to diminish the divergence between it and the proposed demand. If the reasons for deviating from the standard are really strong the Settlement Officer should be able to convince his superiors of thier validity.

 

311.     The net assets estimate founded on an analaysis of rents. - The net assets estimate must be founded a careful analysis of existing rents with a view to discover what is the normal rental to each class of land for which it is proposed to frame a separate revenue rate. All rents which are obviously of a favourable character. Such as those paid by occupancy tenants, or rents whose very form suggests that they are purely customary, as when a tenant-at-will pays the land revenue with the addition of a small proprietary fee, must be excluded from the calculation. The extent to which ohter  abnormal rents can be eliminated will be considered later on. For further remarks on the nature and purpose of the net assets estimate reference should be made to paragraphs 2 and 3 of appendix XX and to rules 1-12 of the rules framed under section 60 of the Land Revenu Act.

 

312.     Classification of rents. - The kinds of rent which are commonly met with are -

(a)        a definite share of the crop. (batari rents);

(b)        cash rents for particular crops which cannot conveniently be divided, at fixed rates per kanal or bigha (zabti rents);

(c)        Cash rents paid on land irrespective of the crop grown upon it. (nakdi rents);

(d)        lump grain rents or rents consisting of fixed amount of grain in the spring and a fixed amount of money in the autumn harves (chokota[4] rents).

            The crops for which money rates are usually taken are sugarcane, cotton, opium, tabacco, vegetables and chari.

 

313.     Cultivating occupancy of land in the Punjab. - The Punjab is in the main a country of peasant owners tilling their own fields. The return of cultivating occupancy for the quinquennial period ending June 15th, 1927, show 44¼ per cent of the cultivated area of the province as tilled by the proprietors themselves and 8¼ per cent as in the possession of occupancy tenants.2 In six districts the proportion cultivated by owners is between 60 and 70 per cent, while in three others in the South-West of the Punjab it falls below 30 per cent.[5] The ramaining 47 per cent was in the hands of tenants-at-will, and regards rent may be classified as follows :-

Per cent

(a)        Paying in kind with or without an addition of cash......................33

(b)        Paying the land revenue with or without a proprietary fee (malikana)......................4

(c)        Free of rent or at a nominal rent............................9

            More than a third of the area under "other cash rents" is in three districts in the South-Distt. of the provinces.

 

314.     Rent data available to be clearly stated. - The extent of the date on which a Settlement Officer can rely in estimating the assumed rental or net assets of the trach under assessment is a matter of such importance that it always well to give in an assessment report a table showing for each circle the percentages of the cultivated area tilled by :-

(1)        oners;

(2)        tenants with rights of occupancy

(3)        tenants-at-will

            (a)        free of rent or paying rents consisting of the revenue alone or the revenue plus a malikana;

(b)        paying other cash rents;

(c)        paying batai or zabti rents;

(d)        paying chakota rents.

            Under the head 3(a) will come all rents paid by tenenat-at-will which can be rejected without further discussion as uneless in etimating the net-assets. Further examination may show that some of the rents under the next three heads must also be excluded, but prima facts they furnish material for calculating the real renting value of the tract. Separate estimates should be deduced from the rents grouped under each of these three heads, unless the area under any one of them is so small that conclusions drawn from it as to the under fixed and pert under fluctuating assessment, it is a good plan, if possible, to frame separate net assests estimates for each of these parts.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIX

The Net Assets Estimate based on batai and zabti rents

315.     Produce estimate. - The estimate based on batai and zabti rents is sometimes called the produce estimate, as the framing of it involves an attempt to determine the money value of the whole yearly produce of the tract under assessment. Strictly speaking, the estimate of the value of the gross produce and that of the share thereof due to the State should be distinguished. The latter is properly called the one-fourth net assets estimate. Both are best conbined in a single statement, a suitable form for which is given in Appendix XII. A separate estimate is framed fro each assessment circle. It is good plan to prepare one also for each estate as a guide to the distribution of the revenue fixed for a whole circle over the villages contained in it.

 

316.     Factors contained in produce estimate. - The evaluation of a correct net-assets estimate based on batai and zabti rents depends on our knowledge of four things namely :-

(a)        the average acreage of each crop on each class of land for which it is proposed to frame senarate rates.

(b)        the average yield per acre of each crop so grown for which rent is taken by division of produce;

(c)        the average price obtainable by agriculturists fro each of the crops referred to under (b); and

(d)        the actual share of the gross produce received by land-owners in the case of crops which are divided and the rent rates in the case of zabti crops.

            In the actual condition of agriculture in the Punjab it would be absurd to estimate a fixed money assessment to be paid for the next twenty or thirty years on the results of any single year. Acreage, outturn and prices all vary within wider or narrower limits, and the fluctuations of the past will tend to repeat themselves in the future.

 

317.     Deduction or ental and standard assessment. - The process of deducing the rental of any class of land from the above four factors is simple. In the case of crops which are divided the acreage multiplied by the yield gives the gross produce, and the last divided by the price gives the money value. The portion of the crop taken by the landlord being known, the rental can at once be deduced from the value of the whole produce. In the case of zabti crops no estimate of yields or price is necessary. The acreage multiplied by the rent rate gives the rental. One-frouth of the rental is the full theoretical assessment. To deduce theoretical revenue rates the assessment may be divided by the area to which the assessment or revenue rates will be applied. This will usually be the cultivated area of some particular year as shown in the area statement or milan, rakba, or where the estates have been remeasured, the cultivated area of each when it came under survey. It has been more usual in recent years to divide the sum of the half net assets which was then the standard of assessment by the average cultivated areas of teh years of which the average crop areas have been embodied in the produce estimate. This plan should mutatis mutandis be adopted where the record of the cultivated area contained in the past milan-rakba statements is fairly reliable, which is not always the case. All the steps of the process described above are exhibited in the from given in Appendix XII. It is on the whole, to be preferred to that used in some settlements which showed under each crop not the actual acreage, but the percentage which that acreage bore to the total cultivated area. Where this plan was adopted the result was of course, to give a prodcue estimate for 100 acress of each class of land, the 100 acres being an exact type of the whole cultivated area of that class. The produce divided by 100 gave the half net assets rate. and this multiplied by the cultivited area gave the maximum assesemnt. In some recent settlement assessment rates have been framed for, and applied to, the average area of harvested crops under each class of land, and not eh cultivated area under each class recofed in the milan-rakba. In very insecure tracts this is the better plan

 

318.     Entry in produce estimate of everage crop areas. - The reforms introduced in 1885 with the object of securing accurate crop inspections and the continuous record of harvest results have a very direct bearing on the value to be attached to produce estimates. It now possible to deude the acreage under each crop from the figures for a considerable member of years, adn prima facie, the more harvests that can be brought into account the better. But no use should be made of any statistics whose substantial accuracy is doubtful. Enquiry and his own observation of the way in which the patwaris carry out the crop inspections at the beginning of settlements can be trusted. In a tract where the process of bringing waste lands under the plough is proceeding rapidly or wher the character of the cultivtion has been changed for example by the introduction of canal irrigation, attention must be confined to those recent years in chwih the conditions have been similar to those traviling at the time. The object is to take the data of a period whose reuslts have been such as are likely to be repeated in the near future. The oders of the Finanical Commissioner should be obtained at as early settlment as possible in regard to the cycle or period of years of which the averge mature crop areas are to be taken basis of the produce restimates in the different tahsils under settlment.1[6] In submitting his proposals on this subject the Settlement Officer should give figures for matured crops by assessmnet circles for each year of the expired settlement.

 

319.     Character of harvests.- The ground for considering the Series of harvests from which the averages are duduced to be a fair sample of the ordinary fluctuations characteristic of the agriculture of the tract should b stated in the assessment report and some account should be given of each these harvest. This is specially important when the Settlement Officer finds that he can nonly rely on the statistics of a few years. He will find some information regarding harvest which he has not himself observed in the reports which the Collector sends to the Director of Land Records with the half yearly crop returns.

 

320.     Failure to record kharaba- Another point of importance is the degree of correctness with which the patwaris record the area on which the crops have failed to come to katurity (kharaba). To under-estimate this is certainly their tendency when they have a motion that to themselves. To do so saves them trouble, and thye are left it is well to make the entry which may be supposed to be most favourbale to the intersets of Government. If a Settlement Officer is convinced that the failed area have not been fully recorded, he must make allowance for this either in framing or in using his produce estimate. He should expalin in his assessment report in what way he has made this allowance.

 

321.     Irritations entries in milan-rakba and jinswar. - Another difficulty in connection with these estimates arose from the disagreeement between the record of land on the one hand and of crops on the other as irrigated and unirrigated. In the jamabandi and the yearly area statment (milan-rakba) all lands should be put down as irrigated which in he ordinary course of hunbandry are watered from time to time but at harvest  inspection only those crops are entered as irrigated which have actually been watered. A very slight equaintance with the agriculture of the Punjab will show how much this detracted from the worth of the produce estimate so far as is professed to show separately in the rental of the differnt classes of land. In the unirrigated columns of the estimate thousands of acres of steps might appear which were actually raised on land which had been recorded and would be assessed, as chahi or nahri. Occasionally in a season of drought irrigation may be pushed beyond its normal limits and crops on barani lands be watered. But the usual effect on produce estimates of the different methods followed in preparing the area and crop statements was to inflate the rental of unirrigated and reduce that of irrigated lands. The discrepancy 'betwen the two systems of record often made it impossible to lay any stress on the produce estimate for each class of land as a separate item, but it did not seriously affect the trustworthines of the aggregate of these separate estimates as showing what the value of the outturn of all classes of land was. There are, as will appear in the sequael, other ways of arriving at an estimate of the relative vaule of the various classes of land and framing differentail soul rates, and if, when all was said and done the Settlement Officer made a mistake under this head, the people had an opportunity of correcting it when the demand was distributed over holdings neverthless, it is very desirable that the produce estimate for each class of Land should show all the crops grown on that clas,s and there is no great difficulty in excerpting the required information from teh khasra girdwari. Orders were, therefore, issued fro the amendment of the annual area statement by adding a new column to show "the total area of crops grown on each class of soil * * * irrespective or irrigation".[7] ! Settlement Officers will be wise not to rely on entries under this head in the area statements without having them carefully teste; but when this process has been applied the annual averages of such entries fro the years comprising the sanctioned cycle should be included in the statistics funished with the assesment report. It may be observed that even with the aid given by the figures contained in the additinal columns the calculation of accurate differntial net asset soil rates is generally nor practicable without resort to certain further assumptions and adjustments the nature of which depends on loacl conditions. As an exmaple reference may be made to paragraph 33 of the Zira tahsil assessemnt report of 1912.

 

322.     Fodder deductions. -  In the drier parts of the Punjab, where rain crops are few and the fodder to feed the well bullocks must be grown on the well lands, a landlord must allow his tenants to devote part of area to the raising of turnips, gree wheat and jowar fro their oxed. Of the crops grown on that area he receives no share adn they should therefore, be omitted in calculating the rental. After a careful observation of local usages a Settlement Officer must make the best estimate he can of the crop areas to be excluded on this account. The actual amount a tenant is allowed to appropriate doubtless averies with the character of the season. Thus in his assessment report of tahsil Chiniot in the Jhang district, Mr. Steedman wrote - "Practically tehre is no limit to a tenant's privileges in cuting jowar and wheat for fodder. I have always been given the same answer to my enquiries. A tenant ought not to cut more than so much, but in a year of deficient pastuarage he cuts as much as is required to support his well bullocks." It was formerly usual in produce estimates to exclude the value of the straw of grain crops, and Settlement Officers had authority for this practice in the 60th paragraph of Barkley's edition of the Directions. But the proper course is to show in the combined produce and net assets estimates the value of the whole of the crops both grain and straw, but ot deduct before calculating the amount of the net assets all items of which the landlord does not take a share. It is always well to know what share of the gross produce the one-fourth net assets really represents.2[8]  In case where the straw is divided it will often be found that teh tenant retains a larger proportion of it than he does of the grain.

 

323.     Difficulty of estimating average yield. - To estimate the avergae yield of each crop on the different classes of land in a tract as large as an ordinary assessment circle is a task of great diffculty. Since the attempt to record soils with any minuteness has been abandoned, it is quite usual to find all the land dependent upon rain in a large circle put into a single class. Obviously the thousands of cres so classified will vary widely in natural fertility and the avergae outturn will be greatly affected by the degree of skill and industry possessed by teh cultivators. The yield of different harvest also varies to an extraordinary extent, especially in the case of unirrigated crops. In essaying to make the best estimate in his power a Settlement Officer must be guided by the results of experimental cuttings, by his own observations and information gathered from trustworthy persons, by the accounts of land-owners or mortagegess, where obtainable, and by the yields assumed for similar tracts else where.

 

324.     Crop experiments. - Teh defects of the system of experiments carried out under the orders contained in Financial Commissioner' Book Circular XX of 1871 and the improved parctice introduced by Colonel Wace in 1879 have been noticed in Chapter VI. The exdisting instructions on the subject will be found in Financil Comissioner's Standing Order NO. 9-A, and in Appendix X. The quality of the experiment is more important than their mere number. No experimetn should as a rule be accpeted unless its selection has been approved after inspection by an officer not below the rank o tahsildar. An exception may be made under the orders of the Settlement Officer, in the case of very experienced naib-tahsildars. The Settlement Officer hiself or the Extra Assistant Settlement Officer, and the Extra Assistant Settlement Officer should themselves see and approve of as many of the plots as possible, and accordingly and instructions lay stress on the necessity of the inspection of as many as possible of the fields selected by the Settlement Officer, and on the actual carrying out of experiments being entrusted only to trustworthy subordinates. When inspecting a field the Settlement Officer should make a preliminary estimate of its outturn which he can afterwards compare with the results of actual weighment by the official in charge of th experiment. In using the results of crop experiments some allowance may be made for the fact that in fields selected fro experiment less wastage is probably allowed to cocur than in ordinary fields.

 

325.     Eye should be trained to estimate outturn. - It is hopeless to make in the curse of a settlement sufficient experiments to justify an assessing officer in accepting their average results without further inquiry as a true indication of the yield of crops. Experiments are only one among several guides in arrivng at a conclusion upon this point. A Settlement Officer's power of, making a realiable estimate of average yield for the purposes of produce estimate largely depends on the degree in which his eye has been trained to appraise crops.When the girdwari is being made otehr work must give way, especially in the early stages of a settlement, to the supervision of the patwaris in this branch of their duties and the assessing officer should make it his aim to get by personal observation a sufficient acquiantance with the state of the crops in every part of his charge, and some good general idea of the yield of the harvest. He should be constantly making his own metnal estimates of the outturn of the crops which he sees in the course of his inspection and comparing them with those of respectable landowners and of his own sabordinates.

 

326.     Yield of dofasli crops. - Care is needed in estimating the yield of the spring harvest in double cropped land. The fact that a field bears two crops in the year is often not a sign of good soil or good tillage but of the reverese. Any one who uses his eyes can see the miserable results which frequently follow from the common practice of sowign barely or masri after rice, and double-cropping in riverain lands sometimes merely marks the struggle to get the most out of a poor over-saturated soil. In hilly tracts, where maize is the great crop on manured homestad land,s the rabi crop which follows it is often very ligth. At the other extrme we have the heavy wheat crops raised after maize on richly manured well lands in Ludhiana of Jullundur.

 

327.     Produce estimate of each harvest observed. - For every harvest which he observes a Settlement Officer should, if possible, prepare a produce estimate according to what he conceives to be the actual average yield of each crop in that particular season. If he does son, he wil be less likely to make gross blunders in his final calculations.

 

328.     Accounts of landowners and mortgagees. - No opportunity should be lost off examining the accounts of large landowner or mortgages, who coolect in kind. It is sometimes possible to get valuable information from the rent relatzations of estates under the Court of Wards, and occasionally a Settlement Officer may be able to refer to the results of kham tahsil management by Government. Where fulctuating (batai) and fixed (chakota) grain rents exist side by side, the amount of the latter per acre should be compared with the estimated amount of the former.

 

329.     Cancelled.

 

330.     Enquiry into prices. - A Settlement Officer must at an early stage of his operations obtain the sanction of the Financail Commissioner to the commutations prices which he proposes to use in the produce estimate.1[9]

The object of the enquiry into prices is two-fold-

(a)        to determine the commutation prices; and

(b)        to ascertain the general rise or fall in the prices of agricultural produce since the last settlement.

For the latter purpose the investigation must be carried further back than would other wise be necessary.

 

331.     Prices to be adopted. - For commutation prices we would use were they ascertainable the average prcies which will be obtained fro their crops by agriculatureists from village traders during the coming settement or, if its term is a long one, during the first ten or fifteen years of its currecny. But eschewing matters of speculation2[10] the only safe plan is to take the average of a sufficiently long period in the past, and assume that the range of future prices will not be dissimilar. Accrdingly the rules under the first Punjab Land REveneu Act (XXXIII of 1871) required Settlement Officers to submit with their assessment reports as statment showing the changes in the value of produce during the last twenty years divided into quinquennial periods, and the 58th paragraph of Barkley's edition of the Directions, published in 1875, precribes the use of the average prices of twenty years int he produce estimate. It is a mistake to lay down any geneal rule to this sort. In deciding what period should be taken for the calculation of avergaes much will depend on th past history of the district. If a tract formerly isolated has been recently opened up by the construction of a railway, and access to new markets has led to a large and apparently permanent rise of prices, it may be right to neglect, the figures for the years before the change took place. But a Settlement Officer must be on his guard against that common weakness of the human mind which leads us to attirbute to existing conditions a greater degree of stability than they actually possess. When high prices or low prices have ruled for several years we are too apt to tassume a permanent rise or a permanent fall and it is quite pssible to mistake the effects of short harvest for those of extended markets. Once a firm grasp of th facts is obtained the matter is one for the excercise of commonsense.

 

332.     How far back history of prices should be traced. -  The history of prices during, the whole term of the expiring settlement must be traced in order to determine the rise or fall of agricultural values since the assessment under revisin began to run. But it is well to carry the enquiry back to a priod five years befroe it introduction. In this wa we learn not only the prices at which the assessemnt has worked, but hose which wre present to the Settlement Officer's mind when he made it. The argument for enhancement to be drawn from th rise of values will be dealth with in a later chapter.

 

333.     Scope of enquiry - Insturction regarding the inquiry into prices will be found in Appnedix XI. The commutation prices should be based on the prices which the farmer obtain fro his produce. On may parts of the country he still sells on the sopt to the village grain-dealer at rates fixed once for all soon after harvest. Subsequent fluctuations of th market do not affect him one way or the other. In examining shop-keeper's books in selected villages the transactions of teh month in which the harvest rate is fixed should be scrutinize. The results of the inspection of grain-dealer's books should be compared with the harvest prices for each assessment circle reported by the field kanugos for entry in the circel note-books.1[11] These should also represent prices got by farmers from the locak ship-keepers. The data for a series of years derived from the above enquiry are sometimes, except in the case of the chief crops, frametary, and the figures for different villlages are occasionally conflicitng. They should therefor, be supplemented and checked by tabulating the harvest prices derived from the returns publised in the Gazette, which will usually be a good deal higher than the village prices. An officail record of the prices of agricultural produce has been made at first monthly, and afterwards forthnightly, in an districts ever since 1851, and tables showing the yearly average prices of the principal agriculaturla staples in each district were appended to the Financial Commissioner's Annunal Revenue Administration Reports from 1856-57 to 1900-1901, and are now published in the yearly Season and Crops Report.

            If it is found that in any tract most of  farmers take their produce to market towns and dispose of it there, the line of enquiry must be adapted to that state of things, and it will be necessary to make allowance for the cost of cartage and for any fees paid at the markets to agents, weighmen, etc.

 

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[1] Where new abstract village note-books are prepared at Settlement the first entries should generally show the average figures for the years on which the assessment calculation were based.

[2] Compare the 4th of the Assessment Instructions of 1893, revised 1914, in Appendix I, and the opening words of Regulations XIX of 1793, by which the permanent settlement was created in Lower Bengal.

[3] It is noted in the Government of India Resolution No. 1 dated 16th January, 1902, on the Land Revenue Policy of the Indian Government that "Regulation II of 1793 pointed out that the Government share of the produce was fixed by estimating the rents paid by the tenants, deducting therefrom the cost of collection, allowing the landlords one-eleventh of the remainder as their share, and appropriating the balance of ten-elevenths as the share of the State.

[4] The term is also used to denote a lump cash rent paid on holding.

2. See Statement II appended to the Land Revenue Administration Report for the year ending 30th September, 1927. The figures for owners include tenants holding direct from Government, and a small area held by tenants free of rent.

 

[5] Rohtak, 62, Karnal 64, Simla 84, Ludhiana 63, Rawalpindi 62, Kangra 64, Multan 22, Jhang 29, and Montgomery 20 per cent.

 

[6] See paragraph 225.

[7] Director of Land Record's circular letter No. 9 dated 6th July, 1897. See column 11 of milan-raqba statement.

 

[8] Vide last sentence of paragraph 7 of Appendix XX.

 

[9] See paragraph 225.

[10] "The fluctuations of prices are far too uncertain, and any conclusions as to their future course far too hypothetical to form a safe basis for assessment and the furthest that it would be wise to go in reliance upon an anticipated rise is to use it as a justification for not going lower than actually prevailing rates" (paragraph 3 of Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department No. 1300-38-2 dated 8th May, 1895 _ Revenue Proceedings, No. 28 of June, 1895, compare paragraph 3 of Punjab Government No. 1088S, dated 12th September, 1888).

 

[11] See paragraph 401, Land Administration Manual.