58
REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94.
[APP.
1874-75.
Ch. VIII of Excise Manual, 1875.
5. In April 1875 rules for controlling cultivation were sanctioned, the main object of
which was to put a stop to the practice of growing for home-
consumption. Cultivation, except under license from the
Deputy Commissioner, was prohibited, and no license was to
be obtainable for plots of less than an acre in extent.
More-
over, each cultivator was bound to obtain from the Tahsildar a license to cover the possession
of his gathered crop until its sale to a licensed vendor or exporter, and stocks were made liable
to inspection by Excise officers of all grades at all times. The rules also provided for the levy
of a fee per acre on cultivation, but no fees were fixed till the year 1875-76: in Raipur and
Bilaspur the old rate of fees, viz., Rs. 0-8-0 an acre, remained in force. For facility of refer-
ence Chapter VIII of the Excise Manual, 1875, has been reprinted and annexed as Appendix
B* to this Memorandum.
The revenue of the year was derived, as before, by auctioning the monopoly of vend, and
competition at the sales resulted in bids rising from Rs. 50,707-12-0 to Rs. 56,263-2-1,
or by nearly 11 per cent. Shops numbered 1,261, or 1 to every 6,478 of the population served;
in Nagpur City and in the interior of Hoshangabad there were 18 and 141 respectively,
allowances which were declared in the Resolution on the Excise Report for the year to be
"inordinate."
The acreage fees on cultivation in Raipur and Bilaspur amounted to Rs.
819-8-0, and these have been shown as fixed duty in Appendix A.
1875-76.
6. The rules of 1875 were in force throughout the year 1875-76, but they did not
influence the revenue of the year which was settled at the
auction held before their issue. That revenue was Rs.
54,245-10-11, excluding acreage fees on cultivation, which amounted to Rs. 807-8-5.
The acreage fee was fixed tentatively for one year at Re. 1 per acre; the amounts real-
ized are shown as fixed duty in Appendix A. Receipts under this head were very small in
Raipur and Bilaspur compared with those for the preceding year, and probably indicate that
scattered cultivation had considerably diminished. The statistics of area cultivated and num-
ber of licenses granted are not quite complete, but it may be taken as certain that, only in the
Khandwa and Katol tahsils was ganja produced in any large quantities; the districts of the
Nerbudda Valley with Sangor and Damoh drew their supplies from Khandwa, while the hill
districts of Betul, Chhindwara, Seoni, and Mandla and the entire Nagpur and Chhattisgarh
Divisions imported from Katol. The terms on which licensed vendors of different districts
obtained their supplies appeared to have varied greatly, but a uniform retail price of 1 pice
weight for 1 pice prevailed all over the provinces. Retail shops numbered 1,254, or 7 less than
in 1874-75; 12 had been closed in Hoshangabad, where the allowance had been condemned by
the Chief Commissioner as excessive, but Nagpur City was still left with 18.
Looking to the total population, the incidence of revenue from ganja per head fell at the
rate of 1¼ pie, or less than would suffice at that time to buy an ordinary smoker one day's supply
of the drug.
1876-77.
7. The old system of raising the revenue was adhered to in 1876-77, viz., (1) selling the
farms and allowing the contractors to make their own
arrangements for obtaining the drug, (2) levying an acreage
fee on cultivation. These sources yielded respectively Rs. 58,995-12-5 and Rs. 1,630-4-0.
The improvement in bids for the right, of retail vend appears to have been due to rising con-
fidence in the arrangements for the control of cultivation, but the Administration recognized
that, no matter what precautions were taken, much ganja must be reaching consumers which
had paid little or no duty, and that bidding would not be keen until every crop raised was
taken under direct control.
In this year a special penal fee on unlicensed cultivation was introduced: the Re. 1 rate
was made applicable only to cases in which a license was obtained before sowing, and Rs. 10
was to be levied on every acre or fraction of an acre not so protected. The penal rate was
realized in '33 cases in Jubbulpure and in a few cases in some other districts. The effect of the
restrictions which had by this time been placed on the right to cultivate freely was most
marked in Raipur and Bilaspur, if the increase in the amounts bid for the right of retail vend
in those districts was due to it, as appears to be the case; but the decline in the number of
licenses applied for and the amount of fees levied was so sudden and rapid as to justify a
suspicion that unlicensed cultivation of small plots must have been going on undetected.
The table below, bringing together statistics for three years, will make the above remarks
clearer:—
RAIPUR.
BILASPUR.
YEAR.
No. of licenses to
cultivate.
License
fees.
Bids for right of
retail vend.
No. of licenses to
cultivate.
License
fees.
Bids for rights of
retail vend.
Rs. A. P.
1874-75
983
491 8 0
2,184
656
328
417
1875-76
64
64 0 0
3,850
104
70
678
1876-77
Nil
Nil
4,020
6
33
981
* Not printed.