Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/80

 aspect of the village life. As a consequence I drew .up & series of qnestions and sent the first copies to Mr. E. W. Legh, Collector of Salem, who succeeded in finding investigators to fill up the answers for one ryotwari and one zemindari village in the neighhour- hood of Salem.. I subsequently 'isited those villages myself and thns ascertained which of my qnestions were liable to be misnnderstood. The Village Qnes- tionaire, as revised by the help of this experience, was given to stndents who expressed a desire to nse it, and as a conseqnence some 14 surveys of villages in the Son th of India are in my hands. These surveys are, of course, o[ 'ery varying merit. Tile students who undertook them varied, naturally, in industry and ability; the villages themseB-es equally varied in the amount of difficnlty they presented. On the West Coast there is no village in the proper sense of the word. There is instead an administrative district over the vhole area of which habitations are scattered indiscriminately, thongh possibly they may be grould a little more closely in the neighbonrhood of & temple. Then some "villages" are small, others are, so  as population is concerned, cormtry tOWIlS; and with the best effort in the world it is not possible for a yonng undergradnate stndent dnring his vacation to lllke a satisfactory economic snrvey of a "11age" with a population[ of 20,000 sonIs.-In snch a case as this, however, one had the consolation of knowing that the effort of the student would in no way be 'asted. He might, or he might not, gather some facts of value; he wonld certainly gain a better nnderstanding of eco- nomic fact. than wonld be possible by a mere study of text-books and attendance at lectu.res. I may say here that the restonse which I received shows that the accusation sometimes made against students in Indian Universitie that they take no interest in any