1 *
2 REPORT ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE NORTHERN INDIA
3 ‘ REVIEW BY SECTIoNs, “19 the tract, when, in short, it seemed almost hopeless to
4 PACHBADRA.
5 get out new salt to meet the demand. Of old stored stock
6 "there was little remaining when the rush began. Though matters
7 improved somewhat when ‘the year under report began, there
8 was little or no relief from the strain thrown on the source
9 until the end of June, when the lowering: of the price of Sambhar
10 salt drew away the whole of the demand on Pachbadra. It isa
11 subject for congratulation that though manufacture, or I should
12 say extraction, was so hampered, the demand for salt was met
13 throughout to the fullest extent and as rapiuly as the railway
14 could supply wagons. It is also satisfactory that though
15 salt was extracted under high pressure, the quality of the supply
16 -to the trade was so good that no complaints were received.
17 . The Kharwals behaved well throughout the crisis; had
18 they sulked, as the memory of other days might have led them
19 to do, it would have been impossible te meet the demand. But
20 they proved manageable, and stimulated by the grant of a bonus
21 of three pies a maund (an addition to the price they got of 25
22 per cent.) on all the salt they extracted ‘before a certain date,
23 they worked heartily, and deserve credit for their good
24 behaviour at a time when, had they chosen to give trouble, mat-
25 ters would have been serious.
26 “ Rupees 3,264 were paid to them in the shape of the
27 bonus above referred to. This amount represents an outturn of
28 maunds 2,08,875 of salt. As I wrote in my annual report last
29 year, this additional payment did not I believe balance the loss
30 the pit owners sustained by extracting salt at a time when the
31 tract was saturated with mvisture causing percolation of water,
32 almost fresh, into the pits, and when the brine in the pits was great-
33 ly diluted by the rainfall. Under these conditions 1t can scarcely
34 be doubted that extraction involved a loss of from one-third
35 to one-fourth of the ripe salt ia the pits. Rupees 2,670 were
36 also paid during the past year for drawing off the water which
37 had filled the pits and which, whileit remained, made the extrac-
38 tion of salt utterly impossible.” This was an assistance to the
39 Kharwals which we could not evade.
40 “One hundred and two pits were emntied last year,
41 40 in the Hiragarh section, 31 in Posali, 23 in Chota Sam-
42 bra, and 8 in Bara Sambra. In the previous year 26 in
43 Hiragarh, 27 in Posali, 13 in Chota Sambra and 1 in Bara
44 Sambra (total 67 pits) were emptied. The Hiragarh pits
45 gave an average outturn of maunds 17,000; Chota Sambra
46 12,000; Posali, 11,000; and Bara Sambra 6,000 maunds,
47 The average outturn per pit for the whole tract being
48 10,000 maunds. Some of the pits (this fact is worth remem-
49 bering in connection with the controversy that was start-
50 ed in 1891-92) in Hiragarh produced maunds 30,000 and from
51 one pit in that section, No. 223, over 40,000 maunds of first class
52 salt, the growth of two years, were extracted. It is impossible
53 to estimate by the appearance of a pit how much salt it con-
54 tains, but when a number of pits are concerned it seems safe to
55 assume that each of the group will average 10,000 maunds, if
56 half the pits are in the Hiragarh section,
57 “T have in an earlier paragraph reported that during the
58 past year the salt was after drying and draining on the inner
59 edge of the pit at once stored in a darge heap on the upper bank,
60 where its contents were estimated by cubic measurement, This
61 method has worked well, and has ako satisfied the Kharwals.
62 ( 48 )