Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎475r] (74/238)

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THE POVERTY OF THE RAYAT.
By Rusticus.
By the time that these pages appear those interested in
India will have learned the result of Sir W. Wedderburn s
deputation to the Secretary of State on behalf of the
“ Famine Union.” The object was to beg for a full in
quiry into the poverty of the Rayat, and one can very well
forecast the answer of official optimism. Such an inquiry
was held in 1879-80 by the Commission of which the late
Sir James Caird was President, and the results are re
corded in the very able report drawn up by Mr. (now
Sir Charles) Elliott. You may go into test villages, taken
at random, and probe the life and condition of every
cultivator, investigate the origin of his indebtedness, and
trace the nature of his security, the rate of his resource,
the amount already paid, and the prospect (if any) of
ultimate clearance. But even so the whole truth will not
be learnt, or if it could yet you would never know whether
the poor man was better off than he was twenty years ago.
Even so you could not base any administrative reform on
such statistics. So it may be argued.
On the other hand, we have the Congress of 1901
demanding organic reform without any statistical basis
whatever. The chronic poverty of the Rayat is held to
be due to periodic enhancements of the fiscal demand from
the land, the only remedy consequently being a permanent
settlement. This assertion is traversed by the Government
resolution of January 17.
Whichever of these views may be accepted as correct, it
is evidently a very serious position. To do nothing is to
let the state of the agriculturists drift from bad to worse,
and the agriculturists are 80 per cent, of the vast Indian
population. To make a permanent assessment upon
fluctuating assets is to compromise an item of national