Growth, Stagnation or Decline?: Agricultural Productivity in British India

290 Pages·1993·9.157 MB·English

by  Sumit Guha

GROWTH, STAGNATION
OR DECLINE?
AGffiCULTURALPRODUCTM'IY
IN BRITISH INDIA
,.
!
Editedb y
SUMIT GUHA
. DELHI
·· OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1:
.; BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS
i1992 - •
l
Deford UniversityP ress, Walto.nS treet, Deford DX2 6DP
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SBN O 19563019X
..
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and publishedb y S. K Mookerjee,O xford Univmity Press
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c·ontents
GeneralE ditors'P reface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Select Tables from Blyn,AgriculturalT rendsi n India
/i 1891-1947 49
r Crop Production
R. C. DESAI 63
Official Yields pe.r Acre in India, 188€r1947: Some
Questions of Interpretation
ALAN w. HESTON 100
Revenue Administration and Agricultural Statistics in
Bombay Presidency
AsHOK V. DESAI 127
A Further Critique of Historical Yields per Acre in In~ia
ALAN w. HESTON 142
} Accuracy of Official Agricultural Statistics and the Sources
l of Growth in the Punjab, 1907-47
CARLE. PRAY 171
.~·.
Trends in Crop Production in the Undivided Punjao:
A R.eassessment
M. MUFAKHARUILS LAM 195
Long Term Trends in per Acre Wheat Yields in
North India, 1827-1947: An Evaluation of
Old Controversies with Some Fresh Evidence
AsHWANIS AITH 207
Quantitative Estimate of Agricultural Output
in Chotanagpur
P. P. MoHAPATRA ·259
AnnotatedB ibliography 287
\
General Editors' Preface
This series focuses on important themes in Indian history, on those
which have long been the subject of interest and debate, or which
have acquired importance more recently.
Each volume in the series consists of, first, a detailed Introduc
tion; second, a careful choice of the essays and book-extracts vital
to a proper understanding of the theme; and, finally, an Annotated
Bibliography.
Using this consistent format, each volume seeks as a whole to
critically assess the state of the art on its theme, chart the historio
graphical shifts that have occurred since the theme emerged, rethink
old problems, open up questioµs which were considered closed,
locate the theme within wider historiographical debates, and pose
new issues of inquiry by which further work may be made possible.
The question of growth and stagnation in Indian agriculture over the
colonial period, which is the subject of this volume, has been central
to the debates on the impact of colonialism. The early estimates of
George Blyn and Sivasubramonian offered a gloomy scenario of
twentieth-century Indian agriculture, with yields failing to keep
pace with population. This pessimistic picture was subsequently
questioned in two ways. Disputing the reliability of agricultur.al
statistics, historians suggested that no calculation of trends in yields
was possible. Others recalculated the figures and doubted the
basis of Blyn's pessimism. Alan Heston argued that the apparent
downward trend in yields was the result of flawed estimation pro
cedures, and needed to be revised. This 'revisionist' thesis was,
in turn, subsequently challenged by other historians.
This volume presents the important contributions of the parti
cipants in this debate. In the introduction, Sumit Guba, critically
assesses both the pessimistic and optimistic assessments, and con
cludes with an important section on productivity trends in the
pre-Blyn period.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce the
essays included in this volume:
Popular Book Depot, for R. C. Desai, 'Crop Production' originally
titled 'Crops', in The Standardo f Living in India and Pakistan (1953).
The Indian Economica nd SocialH istoryR eview,f or: Alan W. Heston,
'Official Yields per Acre in India, 1886-1947: Some Questions of
Interpretation' (1973) and 'A Further Critique of Historical Yields
per Acre in India' (1978);AshokV. Desai, 'Revenue Administration
and Agricultural Statistics in Bombay Presidency' (1978); Carl E.
Pray, 'Accuracy of Official Agricultural Statistics and the Sources
of Growth in the Punjab, 1907-47' (1984). Manohar Publishers for
M. Mufakharul Islam, 'Trends in Crop Production in the Un
divided Punjab: A Reassessment', in Clive J. Dewey (ed.), Arrested
Developmenitn India (1988). The Indianj ournal efA griculturaEl cono
mics for quotations from:' C.H. Shah, 'Comparison of Yield
Estimates prepared on the Basis of Traditional and Crop-Cutting
Methods', vol.17, no. 4 ()962); V. G. Panse, 'Why Crop-Cutting
Mt:thods?', vol. 18, no. 2 (1963) and C.H. Shah, 'Reply' in the
name issue. The University of Pennsylvania Press for the two
Appendix tables from George Blyn, AgriculturalT rends in India
1891-1947. The essays by Ashwani Saith and P. P. Mohapatra are
being published for the first time.
1
j
I
Introduction
Part A
The papers reprinted in this volume concentrate on seemingly
recherche issues concerning the agricultural statistics of a period
now long past: on the quirks and foibles, the judgements and gues
1 ses of defunct Directors of Agriculture and deceased PatwarisM. atters
that now .ppear almost as remote as what song the Sirens sang, and
'what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women ....
Yet, as the reader will find, the debate on agricultural productivity
is far from dead, and. still generates considerable heat among the
protagonists. And this is because a number of wider theories turn
upon conclusions emerging from the controversy regarding the
levels and trends of agricultural production in British India.
The first, and most obvious issue is that of the impact of colonial
rule on India. Nationalist critiques of its economic effects had
begun to appear in the mid-nineteenth century, and a considerable
body of official writing sought to rebut these attacks. Much of the
debate related to national income and standards ofliving, and both
of these, are, of course, intimately connected with output, and
productivity in agriculture. The issue is still alive, being connected
with the wider polemic regarding c;conomic imperialism and
core-periphery relations in the world economy. Evidence from the
official production series was recently used by N. K Chandra to
argue that there had been no improvement in mass consumption
levels in India since the beginning of the present century. 1 And an
economic historian could publish in 1984 a large volume devoted
to refuting the work of R. C. Dutt (published 1904).2
Other equally important, if not equally contentious theories
depend at least in part on the view we take of India's agricµltural
performance in the modern era. L. G. Reynolds for instance, clas
sifies <;conomic growth into extensive and intensive: the first being
characterized by a constant per capita product, and the second by
1 N. K. Chandra, The RetardedE conomiesB, ombay, 1988, ch. 5.
2 M. B. McAlpin, Sulyectt o Famine:F oodC risesa ndE conomicC hangei n Western
India, 1860-1920, Princeton, 1983.
I
l
2 / AgriculturaPl roductivityi n British India
a rising per capita product. For India and Pakistan he sees the transi
tion from one to the other as occurring only after Independence,
which is a)so the time when, if the official series are to be trusted,
agricultural output begins to increase after a quarter-century of
virtual stagnation.3
Malthusian theory is also involved. in the controversy. Malthus
argued that a population unrestr;iined by prudential checks ex
pa_pdst o the limits of food supply, when positive checks come into
operation. 4 This part of his doctrine is, with modifications and
emendations - notably the dropping of his untenable geometrical
and arithmetical progressions - still maintained today. The Indian
record seems strangely at variance with the .theory. The positive
checks (famines, epidemics) occur almost entirely before the First
World War, when agriculture was apparently expanding, and cease
after 1920 when population is growing with food supply constant.
The bulk of the Indian population was believed to be at a bare sub
sistence level at the beginning of the century, and this phenomenon
of population growth with declining food availability calls into
question the whole notion of a subsistence level of consumption i.e.
a level below which life and reproduction cannot be sustained for
any prolonged period of time. The 1920-50 population growth
becomes all the more puzzling because it cannot even be attributed
to improvements in medical facrlities or sanitary conditions-a
proposition demonstrated in a recent paper by Ira Klein.5
Population and food supply thus present us with a puzzle. The
problem also exists when considered as the relation between
agricultural production and population density. It has been argued
that agriculture reacts to population growth by technical and
institutional changes. One form of this view is the famous in
volution hypothesis developed by Clifford Gcertz, where both'
society and agriculture arc modified by population pressure.
Another adjustment hypothesis is that argued by Boserup, where
appropriate innovations are the response to pressure. 6 A more
3 L. G. Reynolds, EconomicG rowth i11 tlie Third World:A n Introductionc, h. Ill,
New Haven and London, 1986.
4 T. R. Malthus.An Essayo n tlieP ri11ciplcoPfo pulation, vol. I, book 1, London,
1958:
5 I. Klein, 'Population Growth and Mortality in British India', Tl1eI ndian
Economica 11dS ocialH is1oryR eview,v ol.XXVI, no. 4 and vol. XXVII, no. 1 (hence
forth IESHR).
'· C. Geertz,A.~riculturaJl. nvolutio1T1l:1 eP rocesseesf EcologicaCl hangei n Indonesia,
Berkeley, 1963.
IntroductionI 3
specific hypothesis developed by Ishikawa actually links land per
head and productivity per unit land by a specific mathematical
relation, with the implication that causation runs from the first to
the second. This has been done using historical time-series data for
Japan, and cross-sectional data for several Asian countries. 7 It is also
specifically limited to paddy cultivation. Yet the important paddy
region of eastern India does not respond to land scarcity in the way
expected by Ishikawa.
Comprehensive agricultural statistics in India eV1erged from the
British Government's efforts to cope with recurring famines and
scarcities. The Famine Commission of 1880 recommended the
compilation of such data, and comprehensive though often im
perfect statistics began to be published from the end of that decade.
The reporting system that took shape hy the end of the century
remained fundamentally unchanged until the Bengal famine of
1943 and continuing food shortages thereafter led to a complete
overhaul of the statistical machinery.
The older statistics had been published annua11yb y the Govern
ment of India, and the end of the forties saw two scholars R. C.
Desai and George Blyn embarking on the formidable task of
processing these data into cc;>mparablet ime-series of crop produc
tion in British India. Desai, whose chapter on this theme forms the
firs.t paper in our col1eciion, was trying to estimate the national
income of India for the decade ending 1940-1, but his discus
sion of the agricultural statistics remains one of the best to date,
and it will be difficult to supersede his estimates for that decade.
Blyn, .on the other hand was solely concerned with agricultural or
crop production (the two will be used synonymously throughout
this essayJ, and worked on the much longer period 1891-1947. Pre
liminary findings were presented in 1951, and a revised version was
published in 1966 in a volume entitled AgriculturalT rends in India
1891-1947: Output, Availabilitya nd Productivity.N o reader of this
book c.an fail to be struck by the painstaking scholarship and immense
labour embodied in it. Its findings were also sufficiently striking,
and have been ably presented by Ashwani Saith in his paper
included in this volume-complete recapitulation is, therefore, not
necessary here. It suffices to say that Blyn presented a fairly grim
7 S. Ishikawa, EconomicD evelopmenitn Asian PerspectiveT, okyo, 1967.
4 / AgriculturaPl roductivityi n British India
picture of twentieth-century India, with food availability failing to
match population growth after 1921, and food crops perform
ing worse than commercial crops. 'f.he study related to the British
administered territory only- but few would argue that the inclusion
of the generally more backward princely states would significantly
change the picture. In 1965 S. Sivasubramonian completed a
thesis on the national income of undivided India 1901-47, and his
findings wjth regard to the agricultural sector essentially matched
Blyn.
those of 8
Other scholars simultaneously approached the historical statistics
from a different angle;"theywere concerned with problems of policy
and planning that beset the Government of India before and after
Independence. One of them remarked:
One question in regard to agriculture most frequently asked in recent
times is about the magnitude 0£.production increases. It is at the root
of the food problem, the problem of allocation of resources to agricul
ture and within agriculture between competing productive processes,
the problem of price rise and inflation, and, if we take the enquiry to
its very end, would be concerned with the problem of the pace and
pattern of economic growth of the country.9
An early study was published by V. G. Panse in 1952.10 Since the
statistics for the permanently settled provinces were deemed un
reliable, he confined himself to the remaining parts of British India,
and analysed the trends in area and yield of different crops from
1911 to 1945. He found that
For cash crops the data reveal clear evidence of generally increasing
yield rates, and, in respect of sugarcane, an expansion of area as well. In
respect of food crops also an expansion of area is perceptible in several
cases as also an increase in the proportion of irrigated ai:ea.Y ield trends
are rather heterogeneous, yield showing an increase for certain crops
8 S. Sivasubramonian, 'The National Income oflndia 1900-1 to 1946--47',
unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Delhi School of Economics, 1965. His estimates for
agriculture were published as 'Estimates of Gross Value of Output of Agricul
ture for Undivided India, 1900-01 to 1946-7', V. K. R. V. Rao et al. (eds),
Paperso n National Incomea nd Allied Topics,v ol. I, Bombay, 1960.
9 M. L. Dantwala, 'Trends in Yields per Acre', N. V. Sovani and V. M.
Dandckar (eds), ChangingI ndia:E ssaysi n Honouref ProfessoDr .R. Gadgil,p . 21,
!3ombay, 1961.
111V . G. Panse, 'Trends in Areas and Yields of Principal Crops', Agricultural
Situationi n India,]unc 1952.
IntroductionI 5
in certain States, a decline in certain others and the absence of any
perceptible change in the remaining.
M. L. Dantwala published a comparison of yields per acre from
1931 to 1959 in 1961. The most striking result was that taking all
crops together, yields 'appear to have increased only slightly and
insignificantly during 1931-59 .. .', while some important crops,
such as rice showed a slight decline in the 1940s which might be
related to increased under-reporting in that period. Dantwala
tested the hypothesis that the older system of yield reporting under
estimated yield by comparison with the crop-cutting surveys that
came to be adopted after Independence, but found no evidence of
such a tendency. 11
The passage of time reduced the importance of these problems
for policy-making, and the appearance of Blyn and Sivasubramo
nian's series seemed to provide a sufficiently solid basis fqr histori
cal study. Both had taken great pains to fill gaps and eliminate
inconsistencies in the data, and no one has, as yet thought it
necessary o_ru seful to replicate their labours as a whole. Revisions
and emendations have either confined themselves to challenging
the reliability of the figures themselves, or modifying some aspect
of them at the all-India or provincial levels.
The most eloquent proponent of the first approach has been C. J.
Dewey.12 His paper could not, for reasons of space be included
here. A few extracts however will give _the reader an idea of his line
of thought. His discussion concludes:
Low grade Indian statistics were not just a question of poor organization
at the centre. They were also a function oflndia's poverty. A myriad of
good causes pressed on the slender resources of the state. The great
majority of producers were illitei:ate and incapable of appreciating the
significance of a statistical returrl, Jn a backward economy units of
production were small, predominantly rural and d~ersed over a huge
area; subsistence production complicated the pro&lem of measurement
and evaluation; '(here were few trade or professional associations to act
as intermediaries. India's vast siZ"ea nd population - the sheer number
of units to be enumerated -was a problem in itself especially when
the diversity of conditions made uniform arrangements impossible.
11 M. L. Dantwala, passim.
12 C.J. Dewey, 'Patwari and Chaukidar: Subordinate Officials and the
Reliability oflndia's Agricultural Statistics', C.J. Dewey and A.G. Hopkins
(eds), The ImperialI mpact:S tudiesi n the EconomicH istoryo fA fricaa nd India.