94 GENERAL POLICY 



(2) It is essential to make labor more productive 

 by increasing the proportion of land to labor in other 

 words, by increasing the average size of the holdings 

 per person employed in cultivation. This necessitates provid- 

 ing more land or, what comes to the same thing, bringing 

 into full use land which is now used only to part of its full 

 capacity. The extent of waste lands in India which are not 

 even bearing forests is extraordinary ; and these can be re- 

 claimed and improved in various ways now well understood. 

 Particular attention should be given to ravine lands and 

 alkali lands. Many stretches of sandy country could also be 

 made fertile by a few years of proper treatment, the crops 

 being well manured for the first years. There are lands 

 over-run with weeds, and so called pasture land, which are 

 mere deserts and should be put under fodder crops. 



Besides the waste lands which yield practically no return 

 there are large stretches of land in private ownership which 

 are much under-developed and yield but one-tenth or one- 

 eighth of what they might do. It is characteristic of many 

 Indian landowners that they do not seem to care whether 

 their land is being properly used or not. So long as they 

 get the rent to which they have been accustomed for many 

 years past they will allow much of it to lie uncultivated, 

 and the rest to decline in fertility. The wealth created by 

 agriculture started in England all her industrial advance- 

 ment ; and it is safe to say that if English landlords had 

 shown this indifference to the proper utilization of their land, 

 England could never have achieved the extraordinary 

 progress of the last century. 



The remarks which I have just made apply to areas of 

 land of all sizes, there being many comparatively small 

 holdings which are themselves neglected. There are places 

 where there are large areas of waste land amounting to 

 several thousands of acres in a compact block, and special 



