28 SOCIAL SCIENTIST a policy which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.3
The most pressing political problem in India today is the mobilisation of the working classes in opposition to the bourgeois-landlord government. Only when the working classes gain a true influence over the agricultural and other policies of the government can serious attempts be made to solve the Indian food crisis.
The main Indian working classes are the industrial workers, the agricultural workers, and the small peasants.4 The progressive groups and, most of all, the Communists are since long engaged in the task of organising the working classes. On the agricultural front the organisational position can be said to be the following :
1) The work has been successful only in limited regions, that is, most of all in West Bengal and Kerala, and in smaller pockets in other states like East Tanjore District in Tamil Nadu or parts of the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh. Outside these areas the movement has had limited success.
2) Even within its strongholds the movement has been successful mainly among agricultural labourers. This class has been organised in militant trade unions of imposing strength. Among the small peasants, however, the work has met with great difficulties.
The small peasants constitute the largest single member class of the Indian working classes. They alone constitute a majority of the agrarain population. This fact accounts for their crucial political importance. A working class movement which lacks the support of the small peasant class can never gain any political influence in India.
The difficulties met with in trying to mobilise the small peasants are, we believe, to some extent due to a theoretical weakness : a better understanding of their own situation would help in formulating a correct strategy. We hope that with this article we can make a theoretical contribution to the solution of this problem.
Thaiyur Panchayat: Co-existence of Wealth and Poverty
Thaiyur Panchayat belongs to Chingleput District in Tamil Nadu. It is situated some 40 kilometres south of Madras City near the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Thaiyur Panchayat has about 5000 inhabitants and about 1000 households belonging to ten different hamlets.5 It has a peculiar caste composition, since nearly 90 per cent of the population are Harijans. They belong to the former untouchable caste of Parayan. The caste composition is a consequence of the 'dual economy' which is found here : The Panchayat lies near the Kovelam Salt Factory in which a majority of the Harijans get employment for part of the year. The economy is 'dual5 in the sense that it is dominated by agriculture during half the year and by salt production during the other half. This 'duality5 is, of course, as peculiar as the caste composition. As we will show, one