This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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