Land and Labour in India

"THE fifteen papers in Daniel and Alice Thorner's book, which were written in India between 1952 and 1960, fall into three groups. The structure of economic power in rural India is examined in the first; the second group is called "Trends" and includes a survey of economic development, 1760-1960; the third is composed of papers criticizing Indian censuses and sample surveys. Although most of the papers are not historical, any historian concerned with agrarian problems, social structure, or census materials may find, as I did, that the Thorners' methods are exceptionally stimulating. They have applied their rigorous critical faculties to a number of sources often used by students of modern India. In each case they have demonstrated that accepted concepts, methods of investigation, categories, or data are inadequate. For example, in the paper entitled "'De-industrialization' in India, 1881-1931," they challenge the evidence of the censuses that the Indian economy was becoming less industrial and more rural by showing that the occupational categories adopted by the census commissioners were not consistent. Similarly, in "Agrarian Revolution by Census Redefinition," they attempt to prove that the Indian census of 1951 gives a misleading picture of the "agrarian structure" and the progress of land redistribution. According to the census, 67.2 per cent of the agricultural population are "owner cultivators" or their dependents, while only 2.1 per cent are "non-cultivating owners" or "rent receivers" and only 18 per cent are cultivating laborers. These small figures for landlords and landless laborers suggest a wider diffusion of economic power in the villages than the Thorners believe exists, and they indicate how the census commissioner has oversimplified complex relationships, used Western categories inappropriate to Indian conditions, and accepted without caution crudely gathered statistics. In two historical essays, the Thorners attribute much of India's agricultural stagnation to the unbalanced development of the rural economy during the British period. "The new forms of land tenure and legal procedure introduced by the British afforded to the landlords and the providers of credit a set of unprecedented mechanisms for drawing away from the peasants everything but a bare minimum required to keep cultivation going." The radical shift of economic power in favor of the wealthy was not accompanied by significant improvements in productive processes or techniques. The result was arrested development and perhaps a decline in per capita income during the last half century or so of British Rule. Since independence, the government of India has introduced unprecedented land reforms. The Thorners believe, however, that the reforms have been inadequate and have not released the productive forces necessary for an agrarian revolution. Ceilings on land holdings have often been ineffective because of "paper partitions" of landed estates; many proprietors still resort to crop sharing and renting to tenants rather than cultivating and modernizing the land themselves." ~ J.R. McLane, Northwestern University, 'The American Historical Review', Vol. 69, No. 1 (Oct., 1963), pp. 148-150