CHAPTER XVII. Agricul ture. The work of almost the whole people. AGRICULTURE AND PRODUCTS. THE cultivation of the soil forms the occupation of the Indian people in a sense which it is difficult to realize in England. As the land-tax forms the mainstay of the imperial revenue, so the ráyat or cultivator constitutes the unit of the social system. The village community contains many members besides the cultivator, but they all exist for his benefit, and all are maintained from the produce of the village fields. Even in considerable towns, the traders and handicraftsmen frequently possess plots of land of their own, on which they raise sufficient grain to supply their families with food. According to the returns of the general Census of 1872, the adult males directly engaged in agriculture amount to nearly 35 millions, or 56°2 per cent. of the total. To these must be added almost all the day-labourers, who number 7 million males, or 12'3 per cent.; thus raising the total of persons directly supported by cultivation to 68:5 per cent.; being more than two-thirds of the whole adult males. The Census of 1881 returned a total of 51,274,586 males as engaged in agriculture throughout British and Feudatory India. Adding to these 7 million of adult day-labourers, there is a total of upwards of 58 million persons directly supported by cultivation, or 72 per cent. of the whole male population engaged in some specified occupation.1 The number of persons indirectly connected with agriculture is also very great. The Famine Commissioners estimate that 90 per cent. of the rural population live more or less by the tillage of the soil. India is, therefore, almost exclusively a country of peasant farmers. 1 For reasons fully explained in the Note on Indian Statistics in the last chapter, the years ordinarily selected for population statements are the Census years 1872 and 1881; and for other details, 1877-78 and 1882-83. The last year for which the final Parliamentary presentment of Indian returns had been received by the author when these sheets went to press in the summer of 1885, ended on 31st March 1883. SYSTEMS OF INDIAN TILLAGE. 483 The increase in the population has, however, developed a Landless large landless class. The cultivated area no longer suffices to class. allow a plot of land for each peasant; and multitudes now find themselves ousted from the soil. They earn a poor livelihood as day-labourers; and according to the Census of 1881, comprise 7,248,491, or one-eighth of the entire adult male population. There is still enough land in India for the whole people, but the Indian peasant clings to his native District, however overcrowded. Migration or emigration has hitherto worked on too small a scale to afford a solution of the difficulty. Agriculture is carried on in the different Provinces with an Various infinite variety of detail. Everywhere the same perpetual systems of agriassiduity is found, but the inherited experience of generations culture. has taught the cultivators to adapt their simple methods to differing circumstances. The deltaic swamps of Bengal and Burma, the dry uplands of the Karnátik, the black-soil plains of the Deccan, the strong clays of the Punjab, the desert sand of Sind or Rájputána, require their separate modes of cultivation. In each case the Indian peasant has learned, without scientific instruction, to grow the crops best suited to the soil. His light plough, which he may be seen carrying a-field on his shoulders, makes but superficial scratches; but what the furrows lack in depth, they gain by repetition, and in the end pulverize every particle of mould. Where irrigation Irrigation. is necessary, native ingenuity has devised the means; although in this as in other matters connected with agriculture, a wide field remains for further development and improvement. The inundation channels in Sind, the wells in the Punjab and the Deccan, the tanks in the Karnátik, the terraces cut on every hillside, water at the present day a far larger area than is commanded by Government canals. Manure is copiously applied Manure. to the more valuable crops, whenever manure is available; its use being limited only by poverty and not by ignorance. The scientific rotation of crops is not adopted as a prin- Rotation of crops. ciple of cultivation. But in practice it is well known that a succession of exhausting crops cannot be taken in consecutive seasons from the same field, and the advantage of fallows is widely recognised. A mutation of crops takes the place of their rotation. The petite culture of Indian husbandmen is in many respects well adapted to the soil, the climate, and the social conditions of the people. The periodicity of the seasons usually allows of two, and in some places of three, harvests in the year. For Riee. Statistics of rice cultivation inexhaustible fertility, and for retentiveness of moisture in a dry season, no soil in the world can surpass the regar or ‘black cotton-soil' of the Deccan. In the broad river basins, the floods annually deposit a fresh top - dressing of silt, thus superseding the necessity of manures. The burning sun and the heavy rains of the tropics combine, as in a natural forcinghouse, to extract the utmost from the soil. A subsequent section will deal with possible improvements in Indian agriculture improvements now necessary in order to support the increasing population. As the means of communication improve and blunt the edge of local scarcity, India is probably destined to compete with America as the granary of Great Britain. The name of rice has from time immemorial been closely associated with Indian agriculture. The rice-eating population is estimated at 67 millions, or over one-third of the whole.1 If, however, we except the deltas of the great rivers, and the long strip of land fringing the coast, rice may be called a rare crop throughout the remainder of the peninsula. But where rice is grown, it is in an almost exclusive sense the staple crop. In British Burma, out of a total cultivated area of 2,833.520 acres, in 1877-78, as many as 2,554,853 acres, or 90 per in different cent., were under rice. In 1882-83, the cultivated area in Provinces. British Burma had risen to 3,746,279 acres, of which 3,380,995 acres, or 90 per cent., were under rice. Independent Burma, on the other hand, grows no rice, but imports largely from British territory. For Bengal, unfortunately, no general statistics are available. But taking Rangpur as a typical District, it was there found that 1 million acres, out of a classified total of a little more than 1 million acres, or 88 per cent., were devoted to rice. Similar proportions hold good for the Province of Orissa, the deltas of the Godávarí, Kistna, and Kaveri (Cauvery), and the lowlands of Travancore, Malabar, Kánara, and the Konkan. Throughout the interior of the country, except in Assam, which is agriculturally a continuation of the Bengal delta, the cultivation of rice occupies but a subordinate place. In the North - Western Provinces and Oudh, rice is grown in damp localities, or with the help of irrigation, and forms a favourite food for the upper classes; but the local supply requires to be supplemented by importation from Bengal. In Madras generally, the area under rice in 1883 amounted to about 43 per cent. of the whole food1. Report of the Indian Famine Commission, part ii. 81 (1880). THE VARIOUS RICE CROPS. 485 grain area. In Bombay proper, the corresponding proportion is only 14 per cent., and in the outlying Province of Sind, 17 per cent. In the Central Provinces, the proportion rises as high as 55 per cent., but in the Punjab it falls to 3 per cent. In scarcely any of the Native States, which cover the centre of the peninsula, is rice grown to a large extent. vation: Rice is in fact a local crop, which can only be cultivated Methods of profitably under exceptional circumstances, although under rice culti those circumstances it returns a larger pecuniary yield than any other food-grain in India. According to the Madras system in Madras; of classification, rice is a 'wet crop,' i.e. it demands steady irrigation. In a few favoured tracts, the requisite irrigation is supplied by local rainfall, but more commonly by the periodical overflow of the rivers, either directly or indirectly through artificial channels. It has been estimated that rice requires 36 to 40 inches of water in order to reach its full development. But more important than the total amount of water, is the period over which that amount is distributed. While the seedlings are in an early stage of growth, 2 inches of water are ample; but when the stem is strong, high floods are almost unable to drown it. In some Districts of Bengal, a longstemmed variety of rice is grown, which will keep its head above 12 feet of water. chiefly retained by Throughout Bengal, there are two main harvests of rice in in Bengal ; the year (1) the áus or early crop, sown on comparatively high lands, during the spring showers, and reaped between July and September; (2) the áman or winter crop, sown in low-lying lands, from June to August, usually transplanted, and reaped from November to January. The latter crop comprises the finer varieties, but the former is the cultivators for their own food supply. great rice harvests of the Bengal year, intermediate ones in different localities. Rangpur District specify no fewer than 295 distinct varieties of rice. The average out-turn per acre in Bengal has been estimated at 15 maunds, or 1200 lbs., of cleaned rice. In 1877-78, when famine was raging in Southern India, the exports of rice from Calcutta (much of it to Madras) amounted to nearly 17 million cwts. In British Burma, there is but a single harvest in the in Burma year, corresponding to the áman of Bengal. The grain 1 See Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. vii. pp. 234-237 (1876). vation. is reddish in colour, and of a coarse quality; but the average out-turn is much higher than in Bengal, reaching in some places an average of 2000 and 2500 lbs. per acre. In 1877-78, the Burmese export of rice exceeded 13 million cwts.; and in 1882-83 it exceeded 21 million cwts., of an estimated aggregate value of over 5 millions sterling. Besides being practically the sole crop grown in the deltaic swamps, rice is also cultivated on all the hills of India, from Hill culti Coorg to the Himálayas. The hill tribes practise one of two methods of cultivation. They either cut the mountain slopes into terraces, to which sufficient water is conveyed by an ingenious system of petty canals; or they trust to the abundant rainfall, and scatter their seeds on clearings formed by burning patches of the jungle. In both cases, rice is the staple crop, wherever the moisture permits. It figures largely in the nomadic system of hill cultivation. Area under rice. Wheat. of wheat cultiva tion. The tables on the next page show the comparative area under rice and the two great other classes of food-grains for all India. But the figures must be taken as only approximate estimates. Recent exports of wheat to Europe have drawn attention to the important place which this crop occupies in Indian agriculture. It is grown to some extent in almost every District. But, broadly speaking, it may be said that wheat does not thrive where rice does; nor, indeed, anywhere south of the Deccan. The great wheat-growing tracts of India are in Statistics the north. The North-Western Provinces in 1883 had 97 per cent. of the food-grain area under wheat, barley, and millets; and about 57 per cent. under wheat alone. In the Punjab, the proportion of wheat and barley is 61 per cent. Wheat is also largely grown in Behar, and to a less extent in the western Districts of Bengal. In the Central Provinces, wheat covers a large proportion of the food-grain area, being the chief cereal in the Districts of Hoshangábád, Narsinghpur, and Ságar. In Bombay, the corresponding proportion was only 15 per cent., and in Sind, 12 per cent. The wheat returns vary from year to year, but disclose a tendency upwards. Their significance may be learned from the fact, that in Great Britain the area under wheat is only 3 million acres, or less than one-half the amount in a single Indian Province, the Punjab. It has been estimated that the total area under wheat in India is equal to the total area under the same crop in the United States. Out-turn of wheat. Nor is the out-turn contemptible, averaging about 13 bushels [Sentence continued on page 488. |