Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/303

 I{EL TING TO INDI gens. The estimate o! human consumption is based on the census o! 1911, and we must point out that an addition of approximately one per cent ought to have been made for the growth of population. A more serious criticism, however, is that the harvests fluctuate 8o much from year to year, md stocks of grain are so commonly carried over from one year to tnother, that nothing less than t three years tlr6rage of the agricultural produce compared with consump- tion based on an estimate of the population tt the middle year can give t trustworthy result. The tuthor has opened up tn important line of statistical inquiry, but has reached no conclusive result. The second chapter, on the "present position of agricul- tural prosperity tnd effectp of famine", contains most useful 8tttistie8 of the yield o! different crops per sore in different countries of the world and in various parts of'India, from which striking conclusions are drawn t8 to the unretlized possibilities of the cultivation of the ordimtry sttpl crops in India. The tathor believes there is in many parts of India t "persistent continmtnoe of misdirected efforts to rtise crops unsuited to the soil or elimate "- md he correctly, we think, regards this ts t leggy of the old regime when ch district had to b5 self-sufficing in its products. The third chapter is devoted to the "Forces which retard the progress of tgric,lture md proposals for their remedy", tnd it falls into three parts. The first part deals with the evil effects o! the Hindu law of inheritance through the subdivision md fmgmentttion of holdings; and he proposes that s lsv shall be enacted to prevent partition below t certain mini- mum ares--in the Punjab, 25 acres for irrigated land, 50 sores for unirr[gsted, this being sufficient for two plo,ghs. For this ts tn ideal we have nothing but praise, for it means t standard of living cmpstrtble with that of Euro- pean countries. In the next section ou "The Land Revenue tnd its burden on the people", the author makes many true observations, but draws from them we think mistaken proposals for s remedy. He quotes t proposal which he first made in 1911 to abolish land revenue tnd substitute es tax on all produce of the laud exported ly rail from the locality. The author has not realized tht by thus dis- couraging transit by rail. he wbuld not only tend to increase the average cost o! haulage, bu would also effectually