CHAPTER II 



INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY 



India is a land of villages, 700,000 of them. Her 

 population is rural, — over ninety per cent, of the people 

 living in small villages. We went into some neighboring 

 villages in order to study the life of the Indian farmer. 

 In the United Provinces the Indian farmer seldom has 

 his home on his own farm land. The average holding of 

 the tenant there is three and one half acres. The aver- 

 age farm of a land-owner is only four and one half acres. 

 These small farms are usually scattered and ''frag- 

 mented" into a number of small plots, very often dis- 

 tributed within a radius of a mile or so round the village. 

 Because of these small scattered holdings the farmers 

 usually live in the villages, securing protection against 

 wild animals and wandering bands of criminals. The 

 ordinary house has walls of solid mud, one story high 

 and no cellar. The roof is a bamboo frame work over 

 which is laid straw thatch or tiles about the size of a 

 man's hand. The reason for the small sized tile is that 

 it is hand molded and baked with cowdung for fuel which 

 does not give enough heat to bake a large tile. There is 

 generally not more than one room and one door. A 

 verandah, six to ten feet wide, serves as shelter for the 

 bullocks and the cow. Such a house costs from fifteen 

 to fifty dollars to build. From our conversation with 



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