JUTE CULTIVATION 67 exploitation and concentration of wealth within the village society. After the introduction of Permanent Settlement this process of increasing differentiation within the peasantry was further accentuated and the relationship between thejotedars (landowners and rich farmers) on the one hand and the bargadars (sharecroppers) and agricultural labourers (kisans) on the other came into full force. Under the twin processes of concentration of landholdings and swelling of the landless labour the disintegration of the ryots (self-sufficient peasants) gathered increasing momentum. In short, Permanent Settlement created properly in land by law and led to the creation of a class of parasitic landlords, and by drawing a large number of people to this new source of income, led to sub-infeudation and rack-renting. The impoverishment of the peasantry through rack-renting, loss of existing sources of livelihood and rise in the cost of living led them increasingly to borrow from moneylenders to whom they gradually began to lose their holdings. The concentration of land and property holding was brought about not simply by a new concept of property in soil, but also by a supporting trend of economic change in that particular direction — by the increasing cash crop farming and commercialization of agriculture, which necessarily followed this new concept of properly in soil. Growth of Commercial Agriculture Although the growth of commercial agriculture made a deep impact on the economy, the area of impact was small since cash crop cultivation formed a small part of total cultivation. In the case of jute, the most extensively cultivated cash crop, the crop area did not exceed 10 percent of the total crop area in the districts in which it was grown during 1859-1885. As commercialization gathered pace a new feature emerged in the organization of production. A new group of credit financiers emerged, many of whom were not local men. The main feature of this new credit agency (NC Group) was that it hypothecated a large part of the crop (particularly rice crop), made advance on it and exported the crop as soon as it was reaped. To what extent the jute cultivators depended on the NC Group for their finances is not known. The Bengal Jute Commission (1873), however, noted: "There is no demand for advances, and a good number of ryots in easy circumstances carry on the cultivation without taking any advance from mahajans or dealers". It is difficult, however, to say whether the Jute Commission (which, after all, was based on the evidence