§ MR. WEIRTo ask the Secretary of State for India, in view of a statement contained in his Budget speech last year; to the effect that the area of land under cultivation in India has increased from 194,000,000 acres in 1880 to 217,000,000 acres in 1900, will he say whether that land is now in the occupation of the people, or does it include any land which at one time was under cultivation and is now waste and unoccupied; and will he state approximately the area actually in occupation and under cultivation in each province of India.
(Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) It is possible that some temporarily uncultivated land may have been included in the estimate which I quoted, though not enough to impair its general accuracy. In the surveyed tracts of the undermentioned provinces, the cropped area for 1900–1 is given as follows—
| (In thousands of acres) | |
| Madras | 27,850 |
| Bombay and Sindh | 25,468 |
| Bengal | 62,098 |
| United Provinces | 42,036 |
| Punjab | 31,770 |
| Central Provinces | 16,210 |
| Lower Burma and Assam | 12,444 |