6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST this may be true, also, of smaller national social formations). Thus, I would submit, there is a sense in which, the postulated unity notwithstanding, it may be as unilluminating to proceed in terms of the agrarian question in, say, India (or China), as it would have been so to conceive of the agrarian question in Europe in the late nineteenth century. One can of course, define the agrarian question in general terms. At one level, then, there may well have been an agrarian question in Europe. But, at the heart of Marxist writing on the agrarian question in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, precisely, an attempt to identify the relevant diversity. To that I shall come. In India (and in China), as in Europe of that epoch, there are several agrarian questions. It is important to capture that diversity. That, I feel sure, has not yet been done rigorously. I will not be able to consider it below, but it does need adequate treatment. Attached to a 'comparative' approach, carelessly and crudely employed, are dangers of an insidious kind. These include, firstly, the positing of general 'lessons' from individual 'success' stories where no such general lesson exists; and, secondly, the extraction of a 'model' from apparent success which ignores critical features of the relevant experience. The specific country approach, carefully pursued, should permit one to guard against such practice. It is an attempt to take account of these dangers, in the context of agrarian transformation in Asia, that has prompted this paper. If any conclusions that emerge are more cautionary than they are possessed of any startling new insight, that, nevertheless, may be salutary. The Agrarian Question and Agrarian Transitions (a) Economic Backwardness, the Agrarian Question, and a Broadening of Meaning. Of all the issues which a political economy of poor countries must confront, perhaps the most important, the most challenging, and the least tractable, is the agrarian question. A central distinguishing characteristic of economic backwardness is an unresolved agrarian question. This unites the poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, whatever the broad means—be they capitalism, socialism, or populism—by which a passage away from economic backwardness is sought. The general notion of an agrarian question has relevance to the whole spectrum of poor countries, although its particular meaning will vary with the broad meant of escape from economic backwardness which is chosen. My concern here is with the agrarian question where capitalism is being attempted. In each of its specific manifestations, in this context, the agrarian question reflects and defines a continuing economic backwardness. But the precise form taken by the agrarian question is capable of great and substantive variety, and needs to be investigated most carefully, and