Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?
- 2 Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth century
- 3 Agrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth century
- 4 The land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830–80: ideology and the official mind
- 5 Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion
- 6 Nawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr district
- 7 Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
- 8 Traditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central Doab
- 9 The structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1948
- 10 Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
- 11 Peasants, moneylenders and colonial rule: an excursion into Central India
- 12 The return of the peasant to South Asian history
- Glossary
- Index
10 - Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?
- 2 Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth century
- 3 Agrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth century
- 4 The land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830–80: ideology and the official mind
- 5 Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion
- 6 Nawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr district
- 7 Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
- 8 Traditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central Doab
- 9 The structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1948
- 10 Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
- 11 Peasants, moneylenders and colonial rule: an excursion into Central India
- 12 The return of the peasant to South Asian history
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
In the west, when they talk of a Purbi (literally someone from the east, an inhabitant of the middle or lower Ganges) they automatically add the adjective dhila meaning rather unenterprising. One cannot but agree with the epithet. We are a long way from the robust northern castes
– Gilbert Etienne, Studies in Indian Agriculture: the Art of the Possible.One of the well-worn problems which have long engaged observers of the agrarian scene has been the uneven growth performance of Indian agriculture in different regions. In the north of the subcontinent there is the obvious contrast between the eastern and western portions of the Indo-Gangetic plain. While Bangladesh, Bengal, Bihar, and eastern U.P. have apparently remained sunk in stagnation and depression, western U.P., Haryana and the Punjab exhibit all the untidy signs of entrepreneurial activity and dynamic growth. Is not the expansion as straightforward as the phenomenon itself? The agriculturally secure regions were the first to enjoy prosperity and the first to fall victim to over-population, so that the centre of dynamic growth moved progressively away from the deltaic and lower riverine areas to the more thinly-held tracts of upper India, where the Pax Britannica and canal irrigation acted like a forced draught behind agricultural expansion. In this way, over the course of the nineteenth-century Lakshmi, the fickle goddess of fortune, betook herself with uneven tread westward from the lush verdure of Bengal until she has come to fix her temporary abode on the Punjab plain between Ludhiana and Lyallpur. The explanation has been applied over a narrower geographical span.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Peasant and the RajStudies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India, pp. 228 - 242Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1978
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