THE VILLAGE AS A UNIT OF INVESTIGATION 67 problem-oriented studies. A majority of village studies belong to the first category, which are often undertaken without any clear idea about how the data would be processed, analysed and presented. In recent years, the wide-^ spread dissatisfaction with all-purposive fact-find jng village studies has encouraged more of problem-oriented studies which are geared to testing specific hypotheses and policy-formulating objectives (e g the impact of high yielding varieties of seeds on productivity and employment)", in Biplab Das-gupta (ed). Village Studies in the Third World, Hindustan Publishing Corporation (India). Delhi, 1978, pp 3-4. 2 JohnHarriss, "Why Poor Stay Poor in Rural South India", Social Scientist, August 1979, p 20. 3 Marx, "Pre-Capitalistic tBconomic Formation (1858)", in Howard Selsan^ David Goldway-Harry Martel (selected and edited), Dynamics of Social Change^ New York, International Publishers, 1975, pp 20§»209. 4 Marx, Capital Vol I, Moscow. Progress Publishers, 1965, p 357. 5 7^W.p357. 6 /6iW.p357. 7 Marx and Engels. The German Ideology, pp 31-32. 8 "First of all, we believe that a mode of production should be rden lined oa thp basis of the relations of production. The relations of production are the ganglion of the socio-economic system, and it is only by focussing primarily on them is one able to determine the laws of Tn9tion of any social formation", Dipanker Gupta, "ft^rmal and Real Subsuroption of Labour under Capital; The Instance of Share-cropping", Economic and Political Weekly, September 27,1980. p A-98. 9 For details, refer Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Mo»cow» P^og^ess/ Publishers, and also R^njit Sau, "On the Agrarian Question in; India—IV". The Frontier, July 28, 1978.