LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
assessmnnt per House was 13¼ annas in 1903-04, or an anna less than the average for the Presidency in that year.
The separate Appendix to this volume gives figures of the receipts and expenditure of the Vizagapatam District Board and the taluk boards subordinate thereto. As usual, the land-cess, which is collected at the rate of one anna in the rupee of the land assessment, is the chief source of income. It is followed by the receipts from tolls, which are collected at fourteen gates at half the maximum rates. The chief heads of expenditure, as usual, are the upkeep of the roads and of the medical and educational institutions. These have already been referred to in Chapters VII, IX and X, respectively.
Besides the four towns already mentioned, Pálkonda was also once constituted a municipality. This was effected in 1869, at the instance of the renters of the taluk, Messrs. Arbuthnot & Co. The next year a squabble occurred as to who should be vice-president, and the council resigned in a body. Three years later, the Collector reported that the secretary was incapable, that none of the inhabitants took the slightest interest in the municipality or desired its continuance, and that its funds were derived from an illegitimate source and were improperly spent. Government accordingly abolished the institution. Proposals to turn Bobbili and Párvatípur into municipalities have been twice (in 1884 and 1902) discussed and twice rejected.
Anakápalle was constituted a municipal town in 1877 at the suggestion of the Collector. In December 1878 the same officer wrote to Government saying that a cyclone and flood had swept away three-quarters of the houses (and consequently, three parts of the council's income) and suggesting that the municipality should be abolished accordingly. Government, however, refused to do so, urging that times of calamity were just the occasions when councils could be of use. The council was given the power of electing its own chairman in 1885, but not until 1897 was it allowed the privilege of electing a proportion (four) of its thirteen councilors. The town is built in a cramped site among low-lying paddy-fields and is consequently difficult to keep clean, and the municipal income is small. The council has
consequently effected little beyond the usual routine duties. It has constructed itself an office from borrowed money; started a small sewage farm; and established, with financial profit, a suburb to the north-west of the town (called Woodpéta after the then Divisional Officer) which affords some relief to the overcrowding which exists.
213
