Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/120

 OF I00K$ he has nothing to do, going usually to four or five and tim- to a different market every day....... He does not ordinarily go to buy anything, but to talk with his frin and neighhours....... A cultivator may attend a tarket every day of the week and not spend more than four pen aitogetlstr, but when he has money the Muhammadan at least, is a reat spendthrift." But these easy floin peasants have a hard working wench-folk. "Theirs is a dull life indeed; the bustle of the market plaee is not for them, nor the gentle pleasures of the fisherman.... But custom is a kindly autocrat who softens every hardship. ..... Tley do not know and do not want the charms of a fuller or a freer life." The second chapter deals with a statistical evaluation of the domestic budgets. 77 per cent of the population are eultivator and 8 non-cultivators, and in the oaleulation of the budgets these two classes are kept apart. "Very great labor was devoted to the lrparation f domestic budgets, by over two hundred ofiieers who made a close scrutiny of the habits and expenditure of more than two thousand families for the purpose." These families were el,asaified in four groups, those in comfort, those below comfort, those above indigence and those in indigence. This classification was made by the personal observation of the ofticer who were told, expressly, that "where they find an agricultural family well-fed, well-housed and well-clothed, this is oomfort; the material necessities are fully satisfied: where they find a family thin and ill-developed, their garments old and worn, their huts ill-thatched and tumbled-down, this is starvation. In most eases the evidence of the eye is decisive,. . ." On the opposite page is given the budget for two groups of the cultivators. The money values were calculated from the quantities of the goods consumed by the peasants md the prevailing local primre.