The rural moneylender, 1888: The Dufferin Report for west UP

Abstract

The published volume of the Dufferin enquiries (1888) reproduces the district reports in the case of only one province, namely the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh). From this volume, whose copies have become very rare, much information can be obtained about how rural credit was organised at the time. This article extracts information on this subject from three detailed reports based on actual information obtained from the debtors and some moneylenders. Interest rates as high as 37.5 per cent per annum prevailed, except in the forested areas where low rents seem to have brought down the interest rates. It also turns out that usury was a profession which zamindars and other relatively prosperous rural strata, including upper peasants and successful artisans, could also take to, though the central figure remained the village ‘banya’.