VIZAGAPATAM.
money in permanent improvements. The uncertainty of their tenure, however, confers the advantage that they lose little by emigrating elsewhere, and emigration is the time-honoured remedy for over-assessment. In this sparsely-peopled country the land-owner wants every ryot he can get, and is careful not to provoke any of them into betaking themselves to a rival estate.
The sist is paid either in cash or kind, cash rents being commoner on the 3,000 feet plateau (where the crops are mostly dry) and in the lower division than on the 2,000 feet plateau of Jeypore itself, where so much paddy is raised. The grain received as rent is stored in huge granaries at Jeypore, Kótapád, Naurangpur and other places and held up until prices are high and then sold to traders from the plains. It would fetch better prices if the sample were not so mixed. The assessment is generally a certain sum on each plough and hoe used. This usually varies from Rs. 6 to Rs. 2 per plough and from as. 4 to as 8 per hoe, according to the quality of the soil and the accessibility of the village. There is a vague understanding as to the amount of wet land covered by the assessment for a plough, but on dry land a ryot may cultivate as much as he likes when he has paid his assessment for his implement. The ámins have power to vary the rates and they also fix the amounts to be paid for the hill-cultivation called kondapódu (see p. 111). In the old days the assessments used to include a number of miscellaneous items, such as stated quantities of oil, ghee, skins, arrowroot and so on; but when the estate was under Government management these were very generally commuted into money payments. The only important item of this kind which survives is the grass sist in certain tánas of the upper division The ryots there are required to pay part of their assessments in thatching-grass, which is difficult to get and is necessary for the annual repair of the estate buildings.
The Jeypore ryots are undoubtedly far more lightly assessed than their brethren in the zamindaris on the plains, but they are casual in their methods of cultivation Except in the Singapur tána and the Wondragedda mutta, there is no irrigation; and the latter is the only place in the upper division where two crops are raised. In the Koraput and Nandapuram taluks the ryots are often, also, deeply in debt to the Sondi liquor-sellers and bound down to them under the góti system referred to on p. 109 above.
Besides the ordinary, or jeráyati, land, the estate includes certain dévadáyam, or temple, property which is managed by the Mahárája direct. There are likewise numerous inams and
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