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The Commercialization of Agriculture in Colonial India: Production, Subsistence and Reproduction in the ‘Dry South’, c. 1870–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Washbrook
David Washbrook
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Extract

Although it would now seem established beyond question that agriculture in most parts of India had been exposed to commercial influences from medieval times, there can be little doubt that a variety of developments from the second half of the nineteenth century greatly strengthened those influences. Railways and road transport made possible a huge expansion in cash cropping, for national and international markets, and production regimes across the subcontinent were placed in a new context of opportunity—and of pressure. While so much would scarcely be disputed among historians, what has become—and remained—more controversial, however, is an understanding of the implications of this extended commercial logic for agrarian economy and society. Since colonial times, opinions would seem to have been divided between ‘optimists’, for whom commercialization marked progress and a growing prosperity for all; ‘pessimists’, for whom it marked regress into deepening class stratification and mass pauperization; and ‘sceptics’ who held that it made very little difference and that its impact was largely absorbed by preexisting structures of wealth accumulation and power on the land.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 129 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 For the growth of commerce in late medieval South India, see Subrahmanyam, S., The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650 (Cambridge, 1990);CrossRefGoogle Scholaralso Subrahmanyam, S. (ed.), Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India (Delhi, 1990.)Google Scholar

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3 These three positions can be traced back to debates in the later nineteenth century. For a recent optimistic or ‘meliorist’ account of, particularly, Western India, see McAlpin, M., Subject to Famine: Food Crisis and Economic Change in Western India, 1860–1920 (Princeton, 1983);CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a more pessimistic view, Guha, S., The Agrarian Economy of the Bombay Deccan (Delhi, 1985);Google Scholar for a sceptical view, Charlesworth, N., Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency, 1850–1935 (Cambridge, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See my, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency 1870–1920 (Cambridge, 1976);Google Scholar also, ‘Country Politics: Madras 1870–1930’, Modern Asian Studies 7, 1973;Google Scholar also ‘Economic Stratification in Rural Madras’ in Hopkins, A. and Dewey, C. (eds), The Imperial Impact (London, 1978).Google Scholar

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6 Robert calculated this decline at a rate of 0.06 per cent per annum between 1891 and 1931. Robert, ‘Economic Change’, p. 63.Google Scholar

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8 For example, the droughts of 1891–92 and 1896–97 reduced cropped area by 25 and 18 per cent, respectively, from that of their previous seasons. Bad seasons between 1917–18 and 1923–24 kept average cropped area 6 per cent lower than in 1916–17.Google ScholarSee Government of India, Agricultural Statistics of British India, Quinquennial Series, ‘Madras: Bellary District’ (Calcutta and Delhi, various).Google Scholar

9 See Government of Madras, Season and Crop Reports (Madras, annual).Google ScholarIn fact, Bellary's crop yield ‘norm’ was briefly reduced for a few years in the 1910s, before being raised back to pre-1900 levels, which the ‘seasonal adjustment’ factor indicates it never reached. Bellary's stagnation is marked against the apparent dynamism of the Southern cotton belt in Coimbatore-Tinnevelly, where, particularly, cotton yields rose noticeably over the period.Google Scholar

10 See below, Section V.

11 The district originally included a number of taluks which, after the Great Famine, were separated off into the separate Anantapur district. Subsequent to that, too, taluk boundaries underwent several changes. At various times between 1890 and 1930, the district varied between 5730 and 5975 square miles.

12 Because of the changes in boundaries, it is easiest to express population changes in these terms. See Census of India, 1871, Report on the Census of the Madras Presidency, vol. 1 (Madras, 1874), p. 68; 1931, vol. 14, pt 2, p. 2.Google Scholar

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17 Calculated from ‘Statement of the Rent-roll’ in Government of Madras, Report on the Settlement of the Land Revenue in the Madras Presidency (Madras, annual series).Google Scholar

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23 Cropped area fell from 2.4 million acres in 1914–15 to 2.2 million in 1918–19. Cotton prices peaked in 1918 at Rs 76 per maund and then halved again over the next two years. Cholum/jowar prices rose from Rs 2.25 per maund in 1915–16 to Rs 7.25 in 1918–19 and Rs 6.5 in 1919–20. Season and Crop Reports a n d Prices and Wages.Google Scholar

24 Cropped area remained static at around 2.2 million acres from 1920–24 and then rose to 2.45 million acres by the end of the decade. Groundnut acreage increased from 20,000 to 315,000 acres and cotton from 446,000 to 593,000 acres. Cotton prices were extremely unstable (as was acreage): dropping sharply in the immediate aftermath of the War; recovering between 1923 and 1925; and then declining slowly until 1929 when they halved, from Rs 24 to Rs 12 per maund, at the onset of the Great Depression. Season and Crop Reports and Prices and Wages.Google Scholar

25 Calculated from ‘Statement of the Rent-roll’, in Land Revenue Reports.Google Scholar

26 From 141,928 to 138,070. Census of India, 1891, vol. XIV, p. 6; 1931, Madras, vol. 2, p. 8.Google Scholar

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35 Ibid., p. 262.

36 Robert, (p. 75) implied that Bellary farming could be drawn under a general ‘inverse farm size: productivity’ rubric derived from the Farm Management Surveys. But, as Bharadwaj has shown, the rubric principally operated in conditions of irrigated agriculture. The surveyed districts with ‘dry’ production conditions most similar to Bellary's were Amraoti and Akola districts, further North across the Deccan. They possessed no significant inverse ratio.Google ScholarSee Bharadwaj, K., Production Conditions in Indian Agriculture (Cambridge, 1972).Google Scholar

37 The sample sizes in both surveys were too small, and too biased towards larger producers, to make this evidence conclusive. But it can be said that, in both cases, the farms with the highest per acre productivities were large. Madras Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee, vol. V (Madras, 1930), pp. 272–350;Google ScholarImperial Council of Agricultural Research, Report on the Cost of Production of Crops in the Principal Sugarcane and Cotton Tracts of India, vol. IV (Delhi, 1938–1939), pp. 11–200.Google Scholar

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41 The ICAR imputed a rental charge of c. Rs. 3·5 per acre to production costs. If this is removed, as irrelevant to the circumstances of most groundnut farmers, charges imputed to bullocks and fertiliser come to about 55 per cent of costs of production. ICAR, IV, pp. 192–8.Google ScholarOn the importance of cattle to groundnut, also See Baker, C., An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 145–53.Google Scholar

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49 Francis, Bellary District, p. 135.Google Scholar

50 See Parliamentary Papers, 1898, vol. XXXII:Google ScholarReport of the Indian Famine Commission, 1898, Appendix, ‘Madras’. Also my ‘Economic Stratification’ and ‘Country Polities’Google Scholar; Arnold, D., ‘Famine’.Google Scholar

51 See Kolliner, A., ‘The Structure of Rural Credit in the Ceded Districts of the Madras Presidency’, paper presented at Conference of Rural Agrarian History,University of Pennsylvania,1975, pp. 39–49.Google Scholar

52 The employment of permanent farm servants seemed closely related to the number of cattle and ploughs kept and amount of wet cultivation undertaken. MPBCE, V, pp. 301, 330, 332.Google Scholar

53 This was rated across all Bellary farming at 5 days of family labour for every 21 days hired. But in purely ‘dry‘ farming it was considerably lower—5.2 days of family labour for 8.1 hired. ICAR, IV, pp. 17, 66–7.Google Scholar

54 G.O. 3628 (Revenue) dated 30 November 1909, Tamilnadu Archives.Google Scholar

55 The three villages examined by the Banking Enquiry were on excellent cotton soil and very close to Bellary town. Nonetheless only between 20 and 30 per cent of their acreages were under cotton. MPBCE, V, pp. 273, 296, 323.Google Scholar

56 Cotton Committee, p. 51.Google Scholar

57 Calculated after ‘disallowing’ for rent. ICAR, IV, p. 21.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., pp. 66–7.

59 MPBCE, V, pp. 324, 332.Google Scholar

60 Of course, local wage rates varied greatly. This figure is based on the ‘commonest’ rate found for male labour in the late 1920s. Quinquennial Wage Censuses (1926).Google Scholar

61 The rains came in June or July and the last harvests in the black-soil areas took place in March.

62 Arnold, , ‘Famine’; also, my Emergence of Provincial Politics, ch. 2.Google Scholar

63 My Emergence of Provincial Politics, chs 2, 3;Google ScholarBaker, , A Rural Economy, ch. 5;Google ScholarArnold, D., Police Power and Colonial Rule, Madras 1859–1947 (Delhi, 1987).Google Scholar

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72 Gross returns to groundnut acreage varied between Rs 37 and Rs 45 against costs of production, recalculated by Kolliner, at about Rs 15–18. MPBCE, V, pp. 275–333;Google ScholarKolliner, , ‘Structure of Credit’, p. 15.Google Scholar Robert's attempt, by manipulation of price and acreage statistics, to demonstrate ‘small farm’ cropping choice as including groundnut is extremely curious. Besides the problem of production conditions, there is also one of location. Before the mid-1920s, 80 per cent of the cotton and the groundnut crops were produced in different (black-soil and red-soil) taluks: if farmers did make price-rational decisions about choosing between them, their farms must have been spread over dozens of miles! Robert, , ‘Economic Change’, pp. 74–5.Google Scholar

73 The ICAR found a ‘business’ income of Rs 7 per acre on cotton against production costs of Rs 13. Although cotton prices were lower in the mid-1930s than in the late 1920s. ICAR, IV, pp. 106–7.Google ScholarCholum returned Rs 11–14 per acre against costs of Rs 5–8 per acre. MPBCE, V, pp. 275–333;Google ScholarKolliner, , ‘Structure of Credit’, p. 15.Google Scholar

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76 Due to variations in land fertility, it seems preferable to quote revenue asset values (which were, albeit loosely, related to fertility) than simple acreages.

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82 Ibid., pp. 54–6; my ‘Economic Stratification’.

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85 Whitcombe, E., ‘Disease and Mortality in Indian Famines’, presentation at workshop on Famine in India, SO AS, October 1989.Google Scholar

86 Groundnut was harvested in November and December, which previously had been a lull in the agricultural season.

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88 Robert, , ‘Economic Change’, p. 68.Google Scholar

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90 Census of India, 1921, vol. XIV, pt 2, p. 120.Google Scholar

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93 Ibid., p. 55.

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100 The yields are given in Bellary ‘country’ maunds of c. 26 lbs. MPBCE, V, pp. 272–335.Google Scholar

101 ICAR, IV, pp. 164–73.Google Scholar

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108 MPBEC, V, p. 278.Google Scholar

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111 In 1890/91, 85,000 ploughs and 209,000 bulls and bullocks were held to be working 2.1 million acres of cultivation; in 1925/26, 80,000 ploughs and 208,000 bulls and bullocks were held to be working 2.4 million acres. Agricultural Statistics 1890/91 and Season and Crop Reports 1925/1926.Google Scholar

112 ICAR, IV, p. 14.Google Scholar

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116 Calculated from ‘Statement of the Rent-roll’ in Land Revenue Report 1925/1926.Google Scholar

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120 See my ‘Economic Stratification’.

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