VAKIOUS IDEALS 175 



but the desire for such progress is not sufficient. Its 

 price must be paid in labour, efficiency, discipline, 

 enterprise and energy. Idealists have drawn glowing 

 pictures of a regenerated India in which the typi- 

 cally Hindu organisations of the joint family, the 

 caste system and the village community have been 

 strengthened and amplified. The communal family 

 is to be the unit, while the caste organisation controls 

 production, and the village community co-ordinates 

 the local industries for the- common good. Above 

 these institutions there is to be an actively paternal 

 Government which sees that every labourer has a 

 plot of land, arranges that manufacturing industry 

 shall be decentralised, that decent houses shall be 

 provided for all, and cottage industries made attractive 

 by the provision of electrical power to work them. 

 In this way work is to be made a pleasure, life is to 

 be made beautiful and noble. Such schemes are 

 sometimes called Indian Economics, and, no doubt, 

 are very attractive, though it is difficult to see how, in 

 such an organisation, there could be any incentive to 

 strenuous work, any opening for individual initiative 

 or enterprise. It is not easy to understand how such 

 conditions could be brought into existence, but 

 assuming that this ideal were to become a reality, 

 the result would be stagnation. For the purpose of 

 considering some definite lines of agricultural policy 

 it is proposed to assume that material progress is 

 desired, but that the country is not prepared for any 

 violent social and economic revolution such as that 



