182 POLICY FOE WESTEEN INDIA 



Finally, to improve the technique of farming and to 

 assist the farmers to adopt the most profitable system 

 and methods of agriculture, the Agricultural and 

 Veterinary Departments were organised and developed 

 to undertake scientific investigation and instruction, 

 to demonstrate improved methods that have stood the 

 test of local experience, and to help the cultivators 

 to adopt them. It has been shown in Chapter V. 

 that here too substantial progress has been achieved, 

 though not perhaps of so sensational or spectacular 

 a nature as some people expect. 



In spite of all this, however, the poverty of the 

 peasant remains the outstanding feature of the situa- 

 tion, large areas of undeveloped and derelict land 

 meet the eye on all sides, and labour is found stand- 

 ing idle and running to waste in every village for a 

 large part of the year. Are there, then, some causes 

 which obstruct progress, which work continuously 

 but imperceptibly to counteract for the general body 

 of agriculturists, the progress which is secured with 

 so much labour in certain directions and for a limited 

 number of individuals ? It now seems clear that the 

 early British administrators were over-sanguine in 

 expecting that if they cleared the way to progress, 

 so far as Government institutions were concerned, 

 the economic motive-power would be found by an 

 invertebrate body of backward agriculturists. Even 

 as regards the more active policy of recent 

 times it is often the disheartening experience of 

 members of the engineering and agricultural depart- 



