50 SOCIAL SCIENTIST cultivating tenants and agricultural labourers, plus a variety of specialized artisans and village servants. Both had extensive temple and monastic lands. Both have since undergone various land reforms, Thanjavur in 1948, 1952, 1956, 1961, 1969 and 1974, and Thai Binh in 1955 and 1959.2 Since about 1965, both Thanjavur and Thai Binh have been selected by their governments for intensive agricultural development^ especially of paddy. The techniques include hybrid high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the use of electric or diesel pumpsets for supplementary irrigation, some use of tractors, and an increased development of mechanized rice mills. Both have obtained some inputs and techniques from abroad: Vietnam mainly from China and the Soviet Union; Thanjavur mainly from the USA and western Europe. Having said all this, we must turn to the differences, which are striking. They include the basic strategies of the two countries, and their outcomes in terms of agricultural methods and yields, the way each region is related to the city, the nation, and the world economy, and the changed relationships and living conditions among the. villagers. THANJAVUR When India became independent in 1947, the ruling Congress Party chiefly represented the rising Indian bourgeoisie and the more ^modern" landowners and richer peasants. It also had to appeal to India's army and bureaucracy, and to its large literate petty-bourgeoisie which influences elections both in the towns and the countryside. In addition it wanted to pacify the poor peasants and landless labourers, who had been recently or were currently carrying on strikes, uprisings^ or even Communist-led revolutionary struggles in various parts of the country, including Thanjavur. From 1947 to 1965 the main rural strategy involved moderate land reforms designed to place a ^ceiling59 on the size'of the bigger holdings, to give fixity of tenure to cultivating tenants, and to raise the wages of agricultmal labourers. Some chemical fertilizers and loans for agricultural development were gradually made more readily available to the better-off farmers who could pledge their land or jewels in return for credit. Efforts were made to form voluntary farming'and marketing cooperatives. The expectation was that the more industrious owners and tenant cultivators would increase their yields and raise Indian agriculture out of the stagnation into which it had lapsed during the last 50 years of British rule. Until the mid-1960s this strategy had a certain modest success. In 1948, some of the biggest landlords, the ^amindars had to sell parts of their estates to the government, which resold them over a period of years to the more prosperous of the tenant farmers. In Thanjavur, the