16 ' SOCIAL SCIENTIST 6. According to NSS data on the distribution of operational holdings, the top 15 per cent of the holdings accounted for 65 per cent of total operated area in 1953-54 and about 55 per cent of operated area in 1971-72. By the latter date however, in order to evade land ceiling laws, not only were ownership holdings broken up, but even operational holdings are likely to have been broken up. According to the 1970-71 which has a somewhat more comprehensive definition of holdings, the top 15 per cent of holdings accounted for 60.5 per cent of operated area. Altogether, therefore, the conclusion that land concentratioo remained more or less unchanged, despite changes in composition at the top, is not unwarranted. 7. ,This argument has been developed in Utsa Pamaik*s "Class Differentiation Within the Peasantry", Economic and Political Weekly Vol. XI, No. 39,1976, as well as in her Daniel Thor- „ ner Memorial Lecture 1985. The argument has an old lineage. It goes back to Marx's Capital Vol.111 and makes an appearance, though in a some-what different form, in E.H. Norman's classic work. Japan's Emergence as a Modem State. 8. A simple calculation of the average point-to-point growth-rates between two recent peak output years, 1975-76 and 1983-84, in (oodgrain output in the different states gives the following figures. Andhra Pradesh 1.4 (per cent per annum) Assam 1.6 " Bihar 0.6 if Gujarat 3.0 fl Haryana 4.0 n Karnataka 0.5 11 Kerala -1.1 " Madhya Pradesh 3.0 " Maharashtra 2.2 11 Orissa 2.6 11 Punjab 6.7 lf Rajasthan 3.3 " Tamilnadu -1.8 ff Uttar Pradesh 5.2 " West Bengal 0.8 11 All India 2.8 n Source : Computed from the Economic Survey 1984-85. _ Peak-to-peak comparisons of this kind l^eave out of account the output trends in the intervening years. Food-grains output in the country as a whole, it may be recalled, had remained ai a virtual plateau during the intervening years prior to the 1983-84 spurt, so that the peak-to-peak comparison in a sense overstates the actual trend. Even so, it is significant that in 7 out of the 15i states above, spanning virtually the whole of the South and the East of the country, outpu»; growth-rate even on a peak-to-peak comparison did not exceed 1.6 per cent per annum. 9. The inequity of indirect taxation is often questioned : on the grounds that the share of indirect tax payments to expenditure increases with expenditure. This however is quite beside the point, since (lie fact remains that according to (he Indirect Taxation Enquiry Committee Report, 55 per cent of total indirect tax revenue in 1973-74, the only year for which calculations have been made, carne from households with monthly per capita expenditure less than Rs. 100. 10. A large body of literature has developed o.n the question of industrial stagnation, eg. S.L. Shetty, "Structural Retrogression in the Indian Economy since the Mid-Sixties." EPW Annual 1978; D. Nayyar, "Industrial Development in India : Some Reflection on Growth and^tagnation", EPW special No. 1978; P. Patnaik, "An Explanatory Hypothesis on the Indian Industrial Stagnation" in A.K. Bagchi N.K. Banerjee ed. Change and Choice in Indian Industry (Calcutta 1982) I.J. Ahluwalia, Industrial Growth in India (Delhi. 1985); and T.N.