§ SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURNI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that in the famine of 1896–7 the Government of the North-West Provinces remitted land revenue to the extent of Rs.6,000,000, while the 466 Government of Bombay remitted Rs.15,000; and whether, looking to the remarks of the Famine Commissioners of 1898, who approved the liberal remissions in the North-West Provinces as mitigating distress, while taking exception to the course followed in Bombay, he will urge upon the Bombay Government a more liberal policy than that followed by them in 1896–7.
§ LORD G. HAMILTONIn the North-West Provinces, where the population of the affected districts may be taken to have been 19½ millions, the Government during the famine of 1897–8 remitted revenue to the extent of six million rupees; in Bombay, on a population of eight millions, about 800,000 rupees were either remitted or suspended, and 5,300,000 rupees were loaned out to occupiers. The Commissioners point out in their Report that the land revenue assessment of the Bombay Deccan is admittedly light; and, on the whole, I am not prepared to accept without reservation the hon. Member's version of their opinion as to the measures taken in the North West Provinces and in Bombay respectively. So far as the famine is concerned I have every reason to believe that the Bombay Government are acting in a judicious and liberal spirit towards the cultivators under their jurisdiction. In Guzerat alone the Bombay Government report that they had up to July deliberately left uncollected two-thirds of the land revenue in the affected districts.
§ SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURNThe noble Lord will understand I am referring to remissions and not suspensions?
§ LORD G. HAMILTONQuite so.