SALT, ABKARI and MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE.
recently been met by the prohibition of the export of the drug from the estate,1[1]
In the plains the sale of ganja is controlled on the system usual elsewhere. The drug is generally supplied from the Daggupád storehouse in Guntúr district, but a proportion of it comes from Kaniyambádi in North Arcot, where the crop grown on the Javádi hills is stored. Comparatively little is used in the district, and the consumers are largely religious mendicants and others from northern India, some Musalmans, and followers of the Rája of Vizianagram who picked up the habit when resident with former chiefs of that family at Benares.
Since April 1900, the collection of sea-customs has devolved,as elsewhere, upon the Salt, Abkári and Customs department.Of the two ports in the district, Bimlipatam contributes some-what the larger proportion of the small amount of export duties which are realized, and Vizagapatam the greater share of the import duties. These latter average about Rs. 5,500 annually at that port.
No land-customs are collected anywhere in the district now, but as late as 1860 almost every zamindar in the district levied on all travellers and traders passing through his property varying fees which (though often described as charges for protection, for pasturage, for the use of halting-places, and so forth) were in reality transit duties pure and simple. Varying rates were demanded for each kávadi-load, pack-bullock and cart, and in Jeypore a tax of three or four pies a bullock was stated to give the Rája an income of Rs. 2,500 per annum.2[2] These duties were not included in the assets on which the peshkash was originally fixed in these estates, and their eventual abolition (in 1863)involved no compensation. The Brinjári pack-bullock traders gave a pitiable account of the hardship they involved. ' We never knew ', they said, ' the amount we should have to pay. In the morning we were taxed; in the evening we were taxed. Our bullocks were detained, our merchandise seized. Tigers and wild beasts are dangerous, but the Rája's robbers are even more to be dreaded.'
The Income-tax Act is not in force in the Agency.
In the plain taluks the tax is levied and collected in the usual manner. Statistics will be found in the separate Appendix to this volume. In the triennium ending with 1904-05 the proportion borne by the tax-payers to the total population
193
