INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

RECENT FA.VINES. 61
alarm became serious; and when the 20th was
passed, the whole country was in a panic." By
the end of October, a petition was received
from the landowners of one district, " praying for
time to pay the revenue, on the grounds"-
1. That the crops are ruined;
2. That the cultivators, unable to get advances,
cannot pay their rent;
3. That the cultivators, owing to previous excessive
exportation of grain, kept no stock for
this year.
This was all substantiated by the official
authority whose duty it was to collect the revenue,
and he forwarded the petition to the proper
quarter for favourable consideration. The
Commissioner of Orissa, however, did not support
it, and the Board of Revenue rejected the
petition as "inadmissible" on the 9th November.
Reports about this time from other districts were
equally unsatisfactory; but the Commissioner at
the time believed that nowhere would there be
less than half a crop, and in many places nearly
a full crop j that there was a general disposition
to make the present season's crop appear
worse than it really was; ana that there were