70 HOLDINGS 



technical and economic outfit to an extent which will 

 enable him to meet the competition of farmers in 

 other countries, and so to maintain his family in 

 comfort and to hand on his holding intact to poster- 

 ity. Before making any suggestions it is necessary 

 to describe in some detail the existing conditions of 

 land distribution in western India and to consider 

 the measures which have been adopted in other 

 countries to deal with a similar situation. The facts 

 in question are set forth in Appendix I. and Appendix 

 II., at the end of this book, for the benefit of those 

 not acquainted with them. 



From the facts recorded in Appendix I. it will be 

 recognised that in the Konkan, the west Deccan and 

 parts of Gujarat, the land has become subdivided to 

 an excessive extent and fragmented in a manner 

 which is generally recognised to be intolerable. The 

 average holding of rice land in the Konkan is only 

 2 or 3 acres, and a single field of an acre in 

 area will often be divided up into eight or nine 

 separately-owned plots. An extreme case, not quoted 

 in Appendix I., may be mentioned where a holding of 

 2-J- gunthas * was partitioned amongst five brothers, 

 so that each brother got a holding of half a guntha, 

 and each of the brothers cultivated each of these 

 five holdings in rotation. The extent of the frag- 

 mentation even in the case of the larger holdings 



will be appreciated from case III. in Appendix I. 



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* 1 guntha = J^ of an acre. 



