PEASANTS AND PRICES: SOME THEORETICAL ASPECTS 63 is consistent with the hypothesis of increasing economic differentiation. In the village Jategaon Budruck, the top two deciles of holdings apprently accounted in 1790 for 37 per cent of the total area-Their share had increased to 48 per cent by 1817 and further to 57 per\ cent by 1917. Data on the proportion of wholly landless would be required to complete the picture. The average holding size fell from 56.5 acres in 1817 to 16.2 acres a century later. In Pimple Saudagar village, the top two deciles of landholders accounted for about 25 per cent of total area in 1771 while their share had increased to as much as 59 per cent by 1914-5. (The data for an intermediate date, 1817, relate only to the average holding size, which had halved to 21.1 acres from 43 acres in 1771; but no information on the holdings distribution is available other than the fact that the range between the smallest and largest holding size had increased). Between 1914-15 and the resurvey in 1947-8 however, the extent of concentration had altered little: the relevant Lorenz curves cross, indicating a more unequal distribution within the lower six deciles, but no change in their position vis-A-vis the remaining cultivators. Conversely, the share in cultivated area of the smaller 60 per cent of the holdings is seen to fall in Jategaon Budruk from about 40 to only 25 per cent during 1790 to 1877, and further to 20 per cent by 1917. In Pimple Saudagar the lower six deciles register a fall from about 45 per cent to 21 per cent during 1771 to 1914. In each case it has to be borne in mind that these households which became totally landless would drop out altogether from the set of cultivating households to which the data relate. We can also state with some precision what proportion of cultivating households would have been affected by a transfer to creditors, of about 5 per cent of the total cultivated area, assuming as it is reasonable to do, that the poorer rather than better-off sections were involved in loss of land. In Jategaon Budruk, 25 per cent of holdings would be affected by such an order of land transfer assuming each peasant lost his entire land, and a much higher proportion assuming each peasant lost part of his land. (We are using the Lorenz curve for the year 1817). In Pimple Saudagar, about 20 per cent of cultivators would have been affected assuming they lost their entire land, and a correspondingly larger proportion assuming only a part of each holding was transferred. Thus, a minimum of one in four and one in five cultivators respectively would have been directly involved in loss of their main asset even when 'only 5 per cent* of cultivated area was transferred to creditors. There is no reason to think that these two villages for which we have data on lafid holdings distribution, were atypical in any way. Further, the land transfers within the cultivating population itself, from the 'agriculturist moneylender' to the small peasants became increasingly important as legal barriers were placed in the way of the professional moneylenders after the passage of the Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act.