The Development of Indian Agriculture

Abstract

THE Oxford University Press is to be congratulated on the foresight it displayed in 1924 in inviting Mr. and Mrs. Albert Howard to prepare a short account of the present position of agriculture in India, and Mr. and Mrs. Howard deserve the warmest thanks of all those interested in agricultural development and research, the education of the farming community, and the social institutions and economic life of the coloured cultivators of Great Britain's tropical and subtropical possessions, not only for the skill with which they have dealt with their subject matter, but also for its timely publication. Their hundredpage volume on “The Development of Indian Agriculture” is a model of compression, not merely a masterly summary, of the salient facts and current opinions regarding the past, present, and future of the industry upon which nine-tenths of the population of India is directly or indirectly dependent. It should prove invaluable as a guide to the labours of the Royal Commission on Indian Agriculture which at present, under Lord Linlithgow, is pursuing its investigations in India; it can also be warmly commended to the members of the Simon Royal Commission for their careful study, not because it deals with the constitutional issues which are their immediate concern, but because constitutional reform without economic and educational reform will do nothing to ameliorate the condition of life of the mass of the population of India, and this is what matters most.

The Development of Indian Agriculture.

By Albert Howard Gabrielle L. C. Howard. (India of To-day, Vol. 8.) Pp. vi + 98 + 6 plates. (London: Oxford University Press, 1927.) 3s. 6d. net.