MONEY LENDERS IN INDIA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 209, 12 October 1878, Page 5

MONEY LENDERS IN INDIA.

The Calcutta correspondent of The Times aays : — At a meeting of the L3gißlative Council held at Silma on the 20th June permission was granted to introduce a Bill for the relief to.f indebted agriculturalists in certain districts in the presidency of Bimbay. This is a tentative and partial scheme towards solving n momentous eoonoffiicprobiem in India. The agricultural classes are Jto a great extent in the hands of money lenders, whose merciless exactions and tyrannous abuses are fostered and protected by tha rigid ami costly nature of the forms and procedure in Euglish Law Courts. A few daces may be cited. A ryot bad borrowed 20 rupees, and at the end of 10 years b'a<l paid on the same loan 1 10 rupeeSj but was still owin.* 280 rupees, having in this short period accumulated a debt 33 times, the amount of the original. Some money lenders, dnriug the absence of a perfectly solvent ryot, obtained an ex parte decree for immediate execution on a bond for 500 rupees, borrowed for purposes of irrigation. Ah estate ,worth 2000 rupees was sold, and bought by the creditors for a mere nothing. An aged widow borrowed 15 rupees on the occasion of the wedding of one of her Eons, and executed a mortgage bond 13 yoirs ago, which gave possession of 40 acres of land to the money lender, who has ever Bince been enjoying the produce of the ground. He has hitherto refused to render un account or surrender possession. A ryot borrowed 17 rupees nod a miund of grain 20 years ago. He haa siuca piid on the debt 567 rupees and executed many bonds, two of which for 375 rupees are still outstanding. Those are only a few of the infinite nucnber of instances recorded of dishonest but legalised persecution on the part of money-lemlerd. The principal causes of the ryot's indebtedness are stated to be obligations for ancestral debt, the inordinate enhancement of the original debt by charges of compound interest at exorbitant rates, tba conslaot exactions from debiors of renewed bond?, besides other fictitious charges of various kind?, On the occasion of the renewal ot bond?, advantages is token by (ha cfoJitor of court procedure, of nob-service ou the debtor of notice, by bribing the court subordinates, or the iucnp'icity of the ryot, through ignorance, to defend himself, and of his inability to the time it-quired for lengthaued at.euduuce at a distant court.