Rival Economic Theories in India

Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

IF WE are to understand the impact on India of foreign economic ideas we must first recognize how immune the Indian economy is to influence from any source, including that of the Indian Government. Indian life, as we have so often been told, resides in the villages. The great cities--Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Madras--are, in any quantitative sense, on the fringe of Indian society. Eighty-three percent of the people live in the villages; and these number a nearly unimaginable 612,000.

The isolation of the Indian village is something that can be both seen and felt. The thin, searching people, the mud and thatch, the patrol of silent cows, the meagre surrounding fields, all convey a sense of solitude. Village government is primitive and but slightly tied to central authority. There is no priest who is in communication with his hierarchy and no telephone or telegraph lines to the city. Often the village can be approached only on foot. Those who have approached it over the mud dikes or along the dusty paths in centuries past have been the agents of old oppressions or the harbingers of new misfortunes. At best they have been bearers of promises that were never kept or prophets of reforms that were never made. Out of the depths of this experience the village has a deeply ingrained mistrust of the world outside, and this mistrust is directed first of all at those who presume to govern.

The economic life of the village is concerned, indeed preoccupied, with the production of food. And so, therefore, is Indian economic life as a whole. Approximately half of India's gross national product is made in agriculture, and approximately 70 percent of the people are directly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.

In an economy where food is so important, so, inevitably, is land. There are very few generalizations which can be made about landholding in the Indian villages. Some people own a great deal more land than others, but a great many people do own some. The state governments are trying with varying degrees of efficiency, determination and success to broaden the base of land ownership. Perhaps it is enough to say that the Indian agrarian community is one of marked but not limitless economic and social inequality. At its bottom, however, are to be found perhaps the world's most unfortunate men--the mass of landless laborers for whom idleness, hunger and privation are endemic. All in all, the Indian village is no Auburn...