¹ This was dissertation fieldwork, 1972/73, supported by a Junior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies.

² For the purposes of the original study, the sample was stratified according to size of operational holding: small, up to and including 5 acres; medium, 5–10 acres; and large, over 10 acres. The sample size was 57 households, out of which 44 were available or willing to be interviewed: 28 small, 10 medium, and 6 large, which reflects their proportions in the full sample. Households were further differentiated into owners, owner/tenants, and tenants. Given space limitations of this article, data are here not broken down nor analyzed according to strata. I conducted interviews personally; collecting information (based on recall) on all household economic activities for the year, including rabi (winter cropping season) 1971/72 through kharif (fall monsoon season) 1972. Although it would have been better to have collected data for the two seasons in the same official crop year, the timing of fieldwork made this impossible.

³ See Darling's, MalcolmThe Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, 4th ed. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1947)Google Scholar [hereafter PP] and Rusticus Loquitor (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1929)Google Scholar.

⁴ The approach draws upon Bohannan, Paul, “The Impact on Money on an African Subsistence Economy,” Journal of Economic History, XIX, 4 (1959)Google Scholar and Barth, Fredrik, “Economic Spheres in Darfur” in Firth, Raymond (ed.), Themes in Economic Anthropology (London: Tavistock, 1967)Google Scholar. In these studies, spheres of value are surrounded by moral sanctions that keep them distinct. No such sanctions are found in the case under consideration here.

⁵ This is in contrast to studies of entrepreneurs as agents of change: e.g., Barth, F. (ed.), The Role of the Entrepreneur in Social Change in Northern Norway (Bergen: Norwegian Universities Press, 1963)Google Scholar and Kilby, Peter (ed.), Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (New York: Free Press, 1971)Google Scholar. If the definition of entrepreneurship must include change, then the use of the concept is problematic. However, there are good arguments for entrepreneurs' attempts to maintain the status quo: see Paine, Robert, Second Thoughts about Barth's Models, (London: Royal Anthropological Institute, RAI Occasional Paper 32, 1974), pp. 24–28Google Scholar.

⁶ See Godelier, Maurice, “The Rationality of Economic Systems,” Pt. 3 of Rationality and Irrationality in Economics (Pearce, Brian, trans.; New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Sahlins, Marshall, “Economic Anthropology and Anthropological Economics,” Social Science Information, VIII, 5 (1969)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert, “Theories of Decision Making in Economics and Behavioral Science,” Surveys of Economic Theory, III: Resource Allocation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁷ PP, p. 164.

⁸ PP, p. 168.

⁹ Gupta, Shivlal, Law Relating to Moneylending in Rajasthan (Jaipur: Current Law Publishers, 1968), p. 2Google Scholar.

¹⁰ PP, pp. 167, 194, 195 (quoted line from incompletely documented United Provinces Banking Enquiry Report, c. 1930).

¹¹ PP, chap. 7; Rusticus (n. 3 above), chap. 12.

¹² “Saving on Loans in Tribal India” in Spradley, James P. & McCurdy, D. W. (eds.), Conformity and Conflict, 2nd ed., (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 428–38Google Scholar.

¹³ A branch of the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur. Such branches are being established to provide cheap and reliable credit to foster agricultural development.

¹⁴ At the then-current exchange rate (U.S. $I = Rs. 7.50), this amounts to $13,333. According to the bank manager, this was but a fraction of the lending capital available.

¹⁵ A number of other cultivators had loans for pump sets from the Land Mortgage Bank in Jaipur, which had lower interest rates (from 6% p.a.) and longer repayment periods than the local bank.

¹⁶ Calculated from Table I by adding the categories Ag. capital and Ag.-rel. capital to roughly 2/5 of Recurring. Controlling for households that did not borrow for recurring expenses, this 2/5 is the proportion recurring agricultural expenses represents of total recurring expenses met from earned and borrowed cash resources: 45 × 2/5 = 18, 18 + 7 + 4 = 29.

¹⁷ See PP, pp. 19–20, for a discussion of this in Punjab and other provinces.

¹⁸ There are two major cropping seasons in Hanumangarh: kharif (during the monsoon) and rabi (in the winter). A short season, zaid rabi, occurs between rabi and kharif, during the hot, dry summer months; the only activity in Hanumangarh at this time is a few vegetable plots next to wells.

¹⁹ The most commonly encountered interest rate in Hanumangarh is 18.75% p.a. This is expressed as 1 rupee, 9 annas (Rs. 1.5625) per month on each Rs. 100 borrowed. Interest is compounded yearly, not monthly or every 6 months as in other parts of India. With few exceptions, all arrangements are expressed in units of cash. On occasion, grain for seed or food is explicitly given as loans in kind, with repayment in kind. The interest rate is 1 seer per 4 seers every six months (50% p.a.). The magnitude of such loans is very small, less than 1 % of total loans.

²⁰ Government of India sets minimum support prices at which Food Corporation of India purchases foodgrains. This program operates to give farmers a fair return to investment in order to stimulate production and adoption of new technology. It also creates buffer stocks against famine.

²¹ Cultivators know they do not receive the best deal, but accept these conditions as a cost of maintaining credit. They explain it in terms of keeping the Baniya “happy.” Happy indeed!; should they attempt to repay such loans with cash, they run the risk of “angering” him and losing future credit.

²² A few cultivators are reorienting their operations along commercial lines. These tend to be large farmers (over ten acres) who have the contacts and knowledge for operating as a business. This strategy, however, entails a major shift in the evaluation and orientation of production. For a fuller discussion see my Ph.D. dissertation, “Structure in Diversity: Variations in Productivity and Efficiency in Indian Agriculture” (Michigan State University Anthropology Dept., 1976).

²³ Galeski, Boguslaw, Basic Concepts of Rural Sociology (Manchester: The University Press, 1972), p. IIGoogle Scholar; Chayanov, A V., “On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems”, in Thorner, Daniel (ed.), The Theory of Peasant Economy,(Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1966), pp. 1–28Google Scholar. See also Kessinger, Tom G., Vilyatpur 1848–1968 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974), pp. 150–53Google Scholar, who discusses this in terms of the “iron chest system.”

²⁴ Barth, (n. 4 above), p. 171.

²⁵ PP, p. 179.

²⁶ A conclusion supported by other observations: e.g., Hopper, David, “The Economic Organization of a Village in North Central India” (Ph.D. diss., Economics Dept., Cornell, 1957), pp. 161–62Google Scholar; Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama (New York: 20th Century Fund, 1968), p. 1253Google Scholar.

²⁷ For a fuller discussion of underproduction, range of alternatives, and viability, see Nair, Kusum, The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Sahlins, M., Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972)Google Scholar and “Economic Anthropology” (n. 6 above), pp. 29–30.

²⁸ Bailey, F. G., “The Peasant View of the Bad Life,” Advancement of Science, XXIII, 114 (1966), pp. 399–409Google Scholar.

²⁹ This would have the added benefit of helping fulfill procurement targets of the Food Corporation of India.