DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31218#0268
THE CASTE SYSTEM OF NORTHERN INDIA
Of the total population of the United Provinces, 76
per cent depend primarily or solely on
2. Economic con- agriculture for a living. To another 2
dition of the per cent, agriculture is a secondary occu-
peasantry pation; whilst yet another 11 per cent,
residing in the rural tracts, are indirectly
dependent thereon. No apology is needed, therefore,
for concentrating attention on the economic circum-
stances of the peasantry, or for dismissing the urban
population with a ‘viutatis mutandis’.
The principal features of the life of a peasant can be
briefly stated as follows.
(1) In these provinces, outside the hill tracts, density
is great, and the pressure of man on the soil is every-
where heavy and in some places intolerable. There is
roughly one human being to every cultivated acre.
(2) The average holding is small. It has been cal-
culated1 that of the total number of holdings, 18 per cent
are sufficiently large to enable a farmer to live in reason-
able comfort, storing up in good years resources with
which to tide over a period of distress. About 30 per cent
of all holdings are too small to support the cultivator and
his family, unless he possesses some subsidiary source of
income. The majority, namely 52 per cent, are at or
just above the economic level; that is to say, the cultivator
who possesses such a holding can make both ends meet
only in a good year and by unremitting toil. For a large
majority of the peasantry of this province, life is a constant
struggle between a crop and a crop; though for an
appreciable number the severity of this struggle is actually
mitigated by the possession of a subsidiary source of
income.
(3) The province is peculiarly liable to climatic
vicissitudes and peculiarly susceptible to their results.
Agricultural prosperity seldom remains unbroken for
long. Agrarian calamities are rarely sufficiently wide-
spread to affect the entire province at once; allowing for
tliis fact, it can be said that in any given part of the pro-
1 B.E.C.’s report, Vol. I, p. 99, par. 192.
254
Of the total population of the United Provinces, 76
per cent depend primarily or solely on
2. Economic con- agriculture for a living. To another 2
dition of the per cent, agriculture is a secondary occu-
peasantry pation; whilst yet another 11 per cent,
residing in the rural tracts, are indirectly
dependent thereon. No apology is needed, therefore,
for concentrating attention on the economic circum-
stances of the peasantry, or for dismissing the urban
population with a ‘viutatis mutandis’.
The principal features of the life of a peasant can be
briefly stated as follows.
(1) In these provinces, outside the hill tracts, density
is great, and the pressure of man on the soil is every-
where heavy and in some places intolerable. There is
roughly one human being to every cultivated acre.
(2) The average holding is small. It has been cal-
culated1 that of the total number of holdings, 18 per cent
are sufficiently large to enable a farmer to live in reason-
able comfort, storing up in good years resources with
which to tide over a period of distress. About 30 per cent
of all holdings are too small to support the cultivator and
his family, unless he possesses some subsidiary source of
income. The majority, namely 52 per cent, are at or
just above the economic level; that is to say, the cultivator
who possesses such a holding can make both ends meet
only in a good year and by unremitting toil. For a large
majority of the peasantry of this province, life is a constant
struggle between a crop and a crop; though for an
appreciable number the severity of this struggle is actually
mitigated by the possession of a subsidiary source of
income.
(3) The province is peculiarly liable to climatic
vicissitudes and peculiarly susceptible to their results.
Agricultural prosperity seldom remains unbroken for
long. Agrarian calamities are rarely sufficiently wide-
spread to affect the entire province at once; allowing for
tliis fact, it can be said that in any given part of the pro-
1 B.E.C.’s report, Vol. I, p. 99, par. 192.
254