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The author is of opinion that at the end of the 20th century,
Gujarat and its southern neighbour Maharashtra are India’s
leading industrial states. Together they out-distance West
Bengal, while Punjab and Haryana lag behind in economic growth.
The author believes that the colonial land revenue system could
be seen as an early attempt at land reform and planning. The
colonial government’s tax reform was meant to increase the
efficiency of agricultural production by reorganising the size
and structure of the unit of production and to free the
cultivator from an oppressive tax-burden.
According to the
author, after the land-reform measures of the 1950s and 1960s
the Adivasi cultivators made a new start, but price
fluctuations, scant credit facilities, bad harvests and illness
of people and cattle have started the sequence of misery again.
A poor Adivasi woman has very graphically summed up the
situation: "Once we derived our pride from our jati, There
was land for cultivation, there was our jungle, we had our
tradition, but we lost land, and so our pride". The jungle
was the Adivasi’s personal estate. It was the perennial source
of his livelihood, health and sustenance. It was the symbol of
his pride. With its loss, he has lost his mooring. As an
informant observed, "The Adivasi jungle was our home but
now we are exiles in our old jungle".
There is a very
revealing essay by Prabhu P. Mohapatra on the Indian Immigrant
Labourers in Trinidad. These Indians had been brought into
Trinidad as indentured labourers since 1845. By 1984, their
number was roughly 70,000, mostly hailing from the Gangetic
plains of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They worked on 109
sugar estates. The workers were bound to work on the plantations
on a fixed wage according to their contract with the employers.
They were governed by a series of immigration ordinances that
penalised breach of contract by imprisonment and fines.
This essay exposes
the action and intentions of the colonial rulers, who instead of
promoting the welfare of the indentured labourers
and feeling happy over the mutual love and trust of the two
principal communities, did all they could do to negate both
these desirable goals.
The other papers
in this anthology too are revealing and informative. They deal
with labour, capital, landlord-credit, rural-urban migration,
agriculture-industry transition, etc. during the latter half of
the 20th century. The book should be of interest and benefit to
students of sociology, economics and anthropology, particularly
to researchers, and policy-makers in these areas. It is not for
the general reader.
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AN
anthology of essays by eminent scholars on social, political,
anthropological and geographical themes, Work and Social Change
in Asia, has been published in honour of the dedicated Dutch
sociologist Jan Breman. It is quite informative and interesting.
Born in a working class family in 1936, Jan Breman knew what poverty
and oppression meant. Perhaps that is why he was driven to reject
society that condemns people to material want and denies them
fulfilment". Consequently, he devoted his life to the study of
the problems faced by deprived sections of society in the Third
World, particularly in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Trinidad. By
dint of his hard work, Breman rose to be a senior professor at the
University of Amsterdam.
