76 HOLDINGS 



follows : The right to own a small plot of land below 

 the economic limit ; the right to pretend that one can 

 support a family on 2 or 3 acres when such is ob- 

 viously not the case; the right to spend half one's 

 time in idleness because the holding is too small to 

 provide continuous work ; the right to earn a miserable 

 pittance in good years and to fall back on public funds 

 in bad years ; the right to exclude a piece of land from 

 all chance of effective development or normal produc- 

 tiveness. It was with a view to extinguish such rights 

 that the legislation was proposed. The result of a 

 reconstitution of holdings would be more and not less 

 employment on the land ; for well-developed land will 

 demand and will support more labour than ill-de- 

 veloped land. At the same time there would be fewer 

 of the large class of men who own a small plot of 

 land and work partly for themselves and partly for 

 others. It is these men who are now least effective 

 either in the role of land-holders or of labourers. 



So much for the problems of peasant holdings in 

 the Bombay Presidency. It is not proposed to deal 

 at length with the questions of landlord and tenant. 

 Outside Sind the proportion of land in the hands of 

 non-cultivating landlords is not large, and it is only 

 in a few tracts that the situation presents any serious 

 difficulties in this respect. There are parts of the 

 Konkan where rents are very high and where much 

 friction exists between landlord and tenant, and in 

 many localities the land which is given out to tenants 

 on annual lease can be detected at a glance by its 



