VIZAGAPATAM.
the custom of dividing the actual produce of wet lands (assessment on dry land is generally paid in money) between the zamindar and the tenant gives the former's officials chances of exacting perquisites. The general insignificance of the irrigation works, and the refusal of any remission in bad seasons, moreover renders wet cultivation less profitable than it might be, and forces the ryot to carry out repairs to irrigation works which in ryotwari tracts he would calmly leave to Government to effect. There is astonishingly little litigation between landlord and tenant under the tenancy law (Act VIII of 1865) and their relations are usually friendly enough; but the result of the system seems to be that the zammdari ryots in the plains of Vizagapatam are, as a body, much less prosperous than their fellows in southern ryotwari districts of equal fertility. It will be seen from p. 60 that thousands of them have emigrated to Gódávari, and from p. 194 that the receipts from income-tax and the sale of stamps are extremely small in the district; compared with the south, the houses are mean, the standard of comfort is low, and evidences of wealth in the shape of good clothes and gold jewellery among the women are strikingly slender. Outside the bigger towns, the women of the money-lending Kómatis (Baniyans, as they are called locally) are almost the only ones who wear gold ornaments of value. The Kómatis, the Pattu Sáles in some parts, and the Márvaris in the large towns do nearly all the money-lending, and the rates they charge are not reduced in the same manner as further south by the competition of members of the agricultural castes or the benefits of chit associations or nidhis.
In the Agency, matters are on rather different ground. The system under which the Jeypore estate is administered is referred to in the account of it on p. 271 below and is fairly representative of the methods in the smaller properties. Contact with the outer world and the action of the Government officers who managed the estate during the recent minority have swept away many of the oppressive and inconvenient dues and assessments which used to be levied there, so that the taxes on houses, hearths, marriages and trades, which were in force as late as 1868,are things of the past, and the land assessments no longer include contributions of oil, skins, honey and so forth. Land is fertile and plentiful, firing is cheap, the rainfall is unfailing, the market for produce has been immensely widened by new roads, the ryot has usually a lenient and fixed assessment which is protected from violent enhancement by the fear of his decamping to rival
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