POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AGRICULTURE 4l Thaiyur in 1967, 1968 and 1969. 7 Here as elsewhere'consumer'means'consumption unit*. These have been denned in the following simplified way : Age of individual Counted as 1-3 years 1/4 consumption unit 4-7 years 1/2 consumption unit 8-14 years 3/4 consumption unit 15 - 59 years 1 consumption unit 60 and above 3/4 consumption unit The figures in the table are estimates arrived at in a rather complicated manner. See ibid.. Part IV, Appendix 1. 9 The landless category also includes a number of households not at all engaged in agriculture. The number of agricultural workers is consequently low. 10 The classification made here presupposes an analysis which is made only later in the article. See classification of farmers, on p 34. As the sample size is so small, the figures given cannot be taken as representative of the whole population. They are used here as illustrations only. 12 A main source of inspiration has been the works of Maurice Godelier. See, for example, his Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, New Left Books, London 1972. 13 Even if the profit-maximisation model is applicable to them, one can still doubt the fruitfulness of such an approach. Cf David Kaplan, The Formal-substantive Controversy in Economic Anthropology : Reflections on Its Wider Implications, 1968. 14 See Studies in Economics of Farm Management in UP and Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bombay, West Bengal and Madras, issued by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Government of India, New Delhi. 15 Udaya Mehta, "The Problems of the Marginal Farmers in Indian Agriculture", in A R Desai, (ed), Rural Sociology in India, Popular Prakashan, Bombay 1969, p 341. 16 Franklin describes the dominating school of agricultural economics in Punjab Uni- versity, the projections of which are "rooted in the principle of economic ration- alisation, and assumes that as in the United States and Canada, so in India, the average size of the operational holding will gradually expand to coincide with the increase in the minimum power unit now available. They project that with the progressive displacement of bullock power by tractors and other machines Indian farmers will for the first time be able to enjoy the economies of scale that have made agriculture a profitable business enterprise in advanced countries. As for the inefficient cultivators, the small farmers who cannot afford the new technology, ultimately, 'this class will find the gap in return9 to investment on large and small farms so great that they will sell their holdings and leave agriculture. Similarly, the tenant class will begin to disappear : specifically, the owner-cum-tenant culti- vator who used to rely on leased-in land to create an economic unit of operation will sell his small and scattered holdings as he finds large farmers unwilling to rent land that can be cultivated directly at a higher profit". See Francine R Frankel, op. cit., p 14. 17 Here we have made an unrealistic but unimportant simplification. It is not the farmer himself who has to work for 31 days but the members of his family who together must do so. 18 We have ignored expenditures in kind of seeds, fertilisers, etc, since they do not cost the farmer anything, neither any work to speak of, nor any indirect cash expense. 19 A V ChaianoV, "The Socio-Economic Nature of Peasant Farm Economy"; in Sorokin, Zimmerman, and Galpin, A Systematic Source-Book in Rural Sociology, The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1931, pp 144-145. 20 V I Lenin, "A Great Beginning", Collected Works, Vol 29, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1965, p 421. 21 As the reader recognises, this four-class division is no innovation of ours. It has been