Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

The agrarian system of Moslem India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1740277147

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-132094

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: XII, 394 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XIII. Miscellaneous questions

Collection:: Economics Books

THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 107 practice, and arguing from his recommendations back to the position he was trying to improve, we reach the state of things depicted in the following summary! 1. The auditors had been careless and had neglected orders; they had guessed, instead of relying on actual figures; and had shown excessive balances. Consequently, the cunning had prospered, while the honest had suffered; and collectors who could have settled a small balance were frightened by the size of the inflated demand. 2. The rule that the accounts should be based on a list of the receipts given to peasants had been ignored, and unsupported statements of collections had been corruptly accepted. 3. The demands made on the collectors had been basedon standard figures, or hastily compiled data, and not on the facts. 4. Excess collections had not been properly treated (the details of this clause are obscure). 5. The auditors had not allowed for the inevitable fluctuations of agriculture, in consequence of which some villages are im- proving while others are deteriorating; they had held collectors responsible for all deterioration, but had not credited them with improvement. The proper course was to look at the result as a whole. 6. A quarter of the collector's pay had been kept in deposit against possible arrears, and this had been withheld indiscrimin- ately, when it should have been withheld only in cases of culpable negligence. 7. The collectors had not been allowed the staff they required, or their pay for time spent on duty after the issue of an order Hf removal, or for the time of their attendance at audit. 8, The collectors had been harried by futile correspondence. I have omitted from this summary a few clauses which refer to various matters affecting the local administration, but those which I have summarised appear to me to furnish definite proof that the methods of audit which the Com- missioner found in operation had been such as to make an honest collector’s position intolerable; and it must be re- membered that some of the cases he investigated had been dragging on for years. The essence of the report is that collectors had been held liable for far more than was really due from them; and, with an obstinate and vindictive Minister like Todar Mal, dealing with the staff employed by his bitter enemy, there is no difficulty in believing that ! This summary is based on the text given in Akbarnama, iii. 87 4ff., and differs in some paragraphs from Mr. Beveridge’s version.

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