Land and Labour in India

Contents: Preface to the first edition. Introduction to the new edition. Land and Labour: 1. The agrarian problem in India today. 2. The weak and the strong on the Sarda Canal. 3. Employer-labourer relationships in agriculture. 4. Agrarian regions. Trends: 5. Emergence of an Indian economy, 1760-1960. 6. \'De-industrialization\' in India, 1881-1931. 7. Long term trends in output. 8. Ploughing the plan under. 9. Elusive agricultural output figures. Censuses and Sample Surveys: 10. Agrarian revolution by census redefinition. 11. Economic concepts in the Census of India, 1951. 12. The fate of the census of landholding. 13. The agricultural labour enquiry: reflections on concepts and methods. 14. The All-India Rural Credit Survey viewed as a scientific enquiry. 15. The rural credit survey: a postscript. Index.

"Land and Labour in India was first published in 1962. This seminal work remained out of print for long and its inclusion in the Chronicle Classics Series was the initiative of Alice Thorner and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya who has also written an exhaustive and illuminating introduction for this edition.

The essays in this volume were written between 1952-60. Divided into three sections \'Land and Labour\', \'Trends\' and \'Census and Sample Survey\', the essays trace the trajectory of India\'s economic development as well as the contemporary situation in the 1950s. Many of the papers in the volume laid the foundations for Daniel Thorner\'s later works.

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya\'s introduction interweaves the continuing importance of the book for the third millennium reader with the story of the Thorners\' stay in India and their political exile from their own country, the USA." (jacket)