Page 71 - Muzaffargarh Gazzetteer

fixed assessments were, therefore, maintained in these two tehsils in all the
estates where he found them. At the instance of the revenue payers, the fixed
assessments imposed on the small area in the Tehsil Alipur were abolished.
In both Kot Addu and Muzaffargarh the assessment, though nominally by
estates, had to be made by holdings. The owners were called together and,
after the Settlement Officer had announced his assessment on the villages
as a whole, it was then and there broken up and distributed over the different
wells. The method adopted was to take the crops grown on each well during
the past five years, and to apply crop-rates to these; sometimes, when the
estate was irrigated from two or more channels, it was necessary to frame
two or more sets of rates. Wells, of which the lands laid high or low, were
sometimes assessed at higher or lower rates than the other wells in the same
estates. So far as possible, he got the landowners to give their own
assessment of what the different wells should pay; in places they had
prepared elaborate gradation lists of the wells, and he was glad to find that
his own method usually agreed with the estimate of the land-owners, except
for wells belonging to lambardars, retired patwaris and others of the same
kinds whose wells were always considerably better by his system than by
that of the people. The labour of assessing several thousand wells in this way
was enormous, but he could devise no other system since the soil
classification was of no help in the distribution of the revenue.
In the summer of 1924, the Sinawan protective embankment was breached
by an unusually high flood from the Indus, and the greater part of the Kot
Addu Pacca, the eastern part of the Nahri Thal and a long strip running
across the Muzaffargarh Pacca were flooded. The Settlement Officer had to
announce his assessments of these circles in the following winter, by which
time it was impossible to estimate the permanent effect, if any, of the flood.
After he had gone on leave, the Kot Addu people clamoured for the imposition
of crop-rates on the whole of their tehsil outside the Thal, and their request
was granted. In the Settlement Officer's opinion, it was wise, though he
wished they could have made up their minds two years earlier. The result
was that the only fixed assessment remaining in the district was that of
Muzaffargarh, Thal and Pacca Circles. The revenue payers of those two
circles were then beginning to agitate for assessment by crop rates; the truth
was that, unsatisfactory as crop rates in many ways were, particularly in the
opportunities which they gave for petty corruption and extortion, they were
really the form of assessment best suited to a very insecure tract like
Muzaffargarh. The fixed assessments of the last two settlements were to the
advantage of the revenue payers so long as the canal supply was being
improved, but, with the rivers as they were then, a fixed assessment,
however, lenient, was felt as a hardship.
PITCH OF NEW ASSESSMENT
The Settlement Officer was faced with the difficulty that in a number of
circles he was unable to recommend full enhancement which was justified
by his calculation since it was due entirely to the estimated rise in prices

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