Juwu 1907.] 



389 



Miscellaneous. 



cooly emigrant. Under present out-of-date methods of agriculture the return on 

 the capital invested may be small ; but the predilection for land is such [that] 4 that 

 is cheerfully enough accepted. 



Now, this consideration is not merely academical ; it has, as I will explain, a 

 direct bearing at the present day on the prospects of organisation and combination 

 in Indian agriculture. If such organisation and combination are to be initiated and 

 developed there must be local leaders — agricultural experimenters, demonstrators, 

 and business-like organisers- Are these to be found ? Not, surely, it will be argued s 

 amongst the great mass of those laud-holders and ryots, pure and simple, who hitherto 

 have shown no ambition to advance beyond local agricultural practice, no desire to 

 try new methods, new crops. But it happens that we have, within) comparatively 

 recent years, arrived at a period when the first batches of Indian officials, Vakils, 

 Pleaders, etc., educated on Western lines, have reached the time of life when they 

 can retire from active employment and devote their time 'and means and talents 

 to other pursuits for the rest of their lives. Imbued with the prevailing spirit of 

 India as regards the holding of land and the honourableness of j agriculture, a large 

 proportion of these men instinctively turn to the land to afford them interest, 

 occupation and livelihood for the remainder of their days. Certainly, then, it is 

 amongst these men that we may hope to find leaders, good and true, of movements 

 having for their object the improvement of agriculture and the development of 

 agricultural organisation and co-operation. 



But, speaking generally, there is now-a-days a much wider diffusion of edu- 

 cation among the land holding and cultivating classes of India than there ever has 

 been before. The fairly substantial ryots now-a-days give their sons an education 

 which was not dreamt of twenty or thirty years ago, very often saving and econo- 

 mising in order that the most promising of their sons may climb to the upper rungs 

 of the educational ladder. And even the less well-to-do ryots are usually willing to 

 give their sons an education of some sort, even if they cannot afford to send them to 

 College. In fact, it is indisputable that the general level of intelligence in the 

 villages is higher now than ever before ; and probably in every village now-a-days 

 there are some few who would be capable of profiting by a comparative study of 

 agricultural practice. 



Then, again, there are the Zemindars and larger landholders, of Jwhom also 

 it may be said that they are far better educated and more intelligent as a body than 

 they were a decade or two ago. Hitherto they have indolently shared the general 

 apathy of their country-men with regard to agricultural improvement ; but already 

 a few of them have started model farms ; and there is certainly an, awakening 

 amongst them in this respect. It will not be denied that, as a class, they might do 

 much for Indian agriculture, just as the great landholders in Great Britain, from 

 His Majesty the King-Emperor downwards, have done and are doing much for 

 British agriculture. 



Then, again, there seems no reason why the District Boards should not 

 develop an agricultural side of the greatest usefulness. Their revenues are mainly, 

 if not wholly, derived from the land; and it is but fair and just and politic that 

 some small proportion, at any rate, of their revenue, should be returned to the land 

 in the shape of expenditure for the encouragement of agricultural improvement, in 

 the direction either of special agricultural education, experimental demonstration, 

 or medical relief for agricultural live-stock. 



The agencies upon which most reliance must be placed, however, are indivi- 

 dual and non-official. A landholder or ryot who, fired with a zeal for agricultural 

 improvement, demonstrates on his own bit of land the suitability of a new crop, the 

 merits of deep ploughing, the value of a new manure, an economical method of, 



