are, however, remediable, and, as a matter of fact, attempts are being made to overcome them.

2. AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE
COMPARED

Before passing on to a somewhat detailed description of the agricultural and manufacturing industries of the country, it would be well to note the chief characteristics of a mainly agricultural country as compared with those of a chiefly manufacturing country. They are:

(a) In a mainly agricultural country competition, or rather freedom of enterprise-which is the chief feature of modern industry-cannot have its full application. The agriculturist has to go to the land for his work; but raw material can be brought to the manufacturer to be worked on by him.

(b) The agriculturist has to depend very largely on nature; he has to adapt his work to the seasons. But the manufacturer is more free in this respect.

(c) Agriculture does not submit to the largescale system to the extent that manufacture does, and much less specialisation is possible in the former than in the latter.

(d) As the produce of agriculture depends largely on factors which are beyond human control, e.g., rainfall and other weather conditions, it is uncertain. In manufactures the produce is sure.

(e) In agriculture, the law of Diminishing Returns applies with full effect. In manufactures, the effect

Chief features

of the two.

of that law is often more than counterbalanced by the law of Increasing Returns.

(ƒ) In an agricultural country labour is generally immobile, because it is inconvenient and wasteful to the labourer to move from one plot of land to another; and where there is peasant proprietorship there can hardly be any movement at all. In a manufacturing country there are no obstacles to mobility of labour beyond the ordinary obstacles of the ignorance, poverty, and conservative habits of the labourers.

(g) As the operations of agriculture are few and simple, there is much less scope for the division of labour in agriculture than in manufactures.

(h) The profits of manufactures are higher than those of agriculture. As a result, when exchange transactions take place between the raw materials of one country and the manufactures of another, although both countries benefit by the exchange, the gain of the latter is greater than that of the former.

(2) The production of wealth being larger in a manufacturing country, it is capable of supporting a more numerous population than an agricultural country.

(1) Lastly, while agriculture enables a large number of people to live independently, and fosters in them self-reliance and other moral virtues, manufactures tend to the destruction of the freedom of the workmen and to the loss of some of their higher qualities.

CHAPTER VI

PRODUCTION—(Continued)

1. AGRICULTURE

AGRICULTURE is, of course, the most important People mainly industry of India. It gives employment to two- agriculture. engaged in thirds of the total population of the country, and of the rural population nearly 90 per cent. are connected with it, either directly or indirectly.

of land.

In a large country like India, the productivity of Productivity the land cannot but differ from place to place. We have on the one side the exceedingly fertile black cotton-soil and the alluvial land of the Gangetic Delta, and, on the other, the barren rocks of the Vindhyan hills and the sands of western Rajputana. Intermediate between these two extremes is to be found almost every possible variety of fertility. Speaking generally, however, we may say that the land is fertile in India..

Land may be classified in a variety of ways. Land classified. The chief classifications adopted are those into cultivated and uncultivated; cultivable and noncultivable; irrigable and non-irrigable; ek-phasli and do-phasli, or in other words, land which yields one crop in the year and that which gives two.

Produce depends on rainfall.

Harvests:

rabi and kharif.

The rabi less dependent on rainfall than kharif.

The

The actual produce of any year depends on the amount and distribution of the rainfall. periodicity of the seasons often allows of two, and in a few cases, e.g., the irrigated parts of the Madras deltas, of three, harvests in the year. Double-cropping is possible in about one-seventh of the total cultivated area of India.

The two main harvests are the kharif, or the summer crop, and the rabi, or the winter crop. The kharif crops require much water for their growth, and, therefore, are sown as soon as the south-west monsoon commences, and they are reaped between September and November.

The rabi crops, as the name implies, are less dependent on rainfall. They are usually sown in October and November, and they ripen in March and April. The conditions affecting their growth being different, the character of the two kinds of crops also differs. This difference in character, however, is specially marked in Northern India; but is less marked in Bengal, and still less in Madras. During the period of their growth they are subject to a considerable degree of cold, which limits the choice of staples. In Bengal and Madras, very much the same kinds of crops may be grown in summer and winter.

In the Bombay presidency, which gets almost the whole of its rainfall from the S.W. monsoon, kharif is the chief kind of crops. Madras grows chiefly the rabi crops, for it is in winter that the N.E. monsoon brings rain to the province. In Northern India. the south-west monsoon rain gives the condition

necessary for the growth of varied kharif crops, while the winter weather is well suited to the rabi.

of crops.

Indian crops may be divided into (1) cereals, classification (2) pulses, (3) oil-seeds, (4) fibres, (5) dyes, (6) drugs, (7) spices, (8) table-vegetables, (9) pot-herbs, (10) miscellaneous crops, (11) fruits, (12) fodder crops, and (13) root-crops. This division, however, is not strictly logical, as some of the crops fall into more than one of the classes. A brief account of the chief crops is given below, which will perhaps be found useful.

About 80 per cent. of the cultivated area is under food-crops. Rice is grown in areas of heavy rainfall, as, for instance, Bengal, Assam, Burma, and the coast districts of Bombay. Not only is it far the most important crop of Bengal, but over 34 per cent. of the cultivated area of India is under rice. The varieties of rice are innumerable. In Bengal there are two main harvests, the aus, or early crop, and the aman, the later crop. The aus does not require as much rainfall as the aman does. The aus rice is all coarse, and is eaten by the poorer classes alone; but it serves as a provision against famine when there is a failure of the rains, Out of 25 million acres cultivated in Bengal, 16 million acres are under winter rice, 5 under autumn rice. The total annual yield is about 30 million tons. Rice is an important crop in Madras, Bombay, and Burma1

1 Although Bengal is the principal producer of rice, Burma is the largest exporter (vide Agricultural Statistics and the Moral and Material Progress of India).

The chief

crops:

Rice.