64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST threshers, harrows, trailers, tubewells and other mechanised farm equipment is heavily concentrated in the hands of minority of peasants (Saith and Tanka, 1972). The western region comprising of 19 districts witnessed a markedly faster agriculture growth than other parts of the state. Along with Punjab and Haryana, western UP experienced largest growth of rural capital investment. The impact of new technology was greater in this region partly because western UP was well endowed with canals and irrigation works established at the turn of the century, as a result of which the region was transformed into one of the richest tracts during the colonial period. This process of regional growth also manifested itself in the emergence of an infrastructure and the expansion of market towns; commercial farming also gained impetus (Whitecombe, 1971). As a result, western UP differed from eastern UP and the class of polarisation between absentee landlords and peasant producers did not occur to the same degree in the western UP as it did in eastern UP (Amin, 1984). District Muzaffarnagar did not have many large zamindars renting out huge areas of land, instead the agrarian structure was dominated by peasants engaged in self cultivation. Prior to zamindari abolition 32.1 per cent of all land in the district was held as sir and khudkast (Neale, 1962). After abolition of zamindari this meant that the basis of commercial expansion was far stronger here and evidence for this can be seen in the expansion of the agricultural labour force as a proportion of the total number of population engaged in agriculture. In Muzaffarnagar, the proportion rose in 1961-71 by 18.3 per cent and in 1971-81 by 19 per cent compared to UP averages of 10.8 per cent and 6.4 per cent. Thus it indicates that the western UP had an historically determined headstart when the process of commercialisation and capitalist development of agriculture5 began to take hold (Hasan, 1989). The district was selected for study because sugarcane is the major crop in the district and the best quality of land and a large proportion of new inputs are used in its cultivation (Attwood, 1984). The district accounts for 9.08 per cent of the total area and 10.6 j?er cent of the total production of sugarcane of the state in 1991. In the district other competing crops are wheat and rice. Muzaffarnagar is the second largest sugarcane producer in western UP. About 1,91,644 hectares of cultivated land is under sugarcane and produced 1,14,72,645 metric tonnes sugar in 1991.6 CLASSIFICATION OF PEASANTRY The ownership of land alone may not able to give us the correct socio-economic position of peasant households.7 It is due to the differences in possessions of machinery, livestock, variations in irrigation, fertility