The Indian Taxation Enquiry Committee. Evidence - Patna Calcutta and Shillong

For more than half the year there is no sufficient tart from which to get revenue and in the remaining months the supply is so very much in excess of the demand that the price has to come down ridiculously low impairing thereby the capacity of the quantity drawn during this period to bear an incidence which can be at all considered reasonable. [...] The statement below comparing the consumption in the same period in the areas under the distillery system only shows that there was a fall in cosumption of 3 per cent. [...] A.—No: one of the reasons for the introduction of the system was that it reduced the clangor of malpractices; in fact they are becoming extinct. [...] We took it up again; our ifficulty is that the supply varies tremendously at different seasons of the yea. What I understand they do in Madras is to arrange to tap a certain nu er of the trees in the hot weather and a certain number in the cold weath r so as to get a level supply. [...] A certain prportion of the treeti gave the yield and there was probably a way of tapping the trees in such a manner that they would not yield in the hot weather but would yield in the cold weather.