64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
1951-53 and in 1976. The work in 1976 was made possible by fellowships from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and the Canada Council. The information on North Vietnam was obtained during a 10-day visit to Hanoi and the surrounding provinces in November 1976. I am grateful to the Women's Union of Vietnam for inviting me to their country and for making possible my tour of villages, and especially to Mrs. Nguyen Le Khanh, who acted as my interpreter.
1 See, for example, "The Nam Ha Girl on a Resettlement Area", Women of Vietnam, no 4, 1976.
2 The main land reforms in Tamil Nadu have been'the Abolition of Zamindars Act of 1948, the Tanjore Tenants' and Pannaiyals' Protection Act of 1952, the Tamil Nadu Cultivating Tenants (Payment of Fair Rent) Act (XXIV of 1956), The Tamil Nadu Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling on Land) Act (LVIII of 1961), The Tamil Nadu Agricultural Lands Record of Tenancy Rights Act (X of 1969), and the Tamil Nadu Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling on Land) Act of 1974. In North Vietnam, the Law on Agrarian Reform of 1955 distributed the lands to the peasants, and in 1959 the peasants' lands began to be amalgamated into cooperatives.
rf Figures are taken from the Season and Crop Reports of the Government 01 Tamil Nadu for the relevant years.
1 The United States government temporarily delayed the shipment of foodgrains to India during its border war with Pakistan in 1965. In 1966 the same threat was used to compel the Government of India to permit Standard Oil of Indiana to market fertilizers in India at its own rather than at government-controlled prices. In Kumbapettai, 32 out of 53 tenant cultivators in 1976 had no document recording their tenures, and paid roughly 60 per cent of their produce as rent to the landlord, in addition to providing most of their own cultivation expenses.
6 According to the decennial censuses, there were 388,934 full-time or part-time cultivators in Thanjavur in 1949-50 and 378,696 in 1969-70.
7 In Kumbapettai, for example, cultivating tenants leased slightly over half of the land in 1952, whereas they leased only 26 per cent of it in 1976. In Kirippur tenant cultivators leased 44 per cent of the land in 1952 and 24 per cent in 1976.
8 A Vagiswari, Income Earning Trends and Social Status of the Harijan Community of Tamil J^adu, Madras Institute of Development Studies, 1972. Reviewed in The Radical Review, vol 4 no 1, April 1973, pp 26-33.
9 Much food is still used in offerings to the deities in temples in Thanjavur. In the famous Subramania Temple of Swamimalai, for example, I was told by priests that 100 litres of milk are still poured out daily as libations to the deities.
10 The number of field rats has greatly increased in Thanjavur since 1952. Officers of the Intensive Agricultural Development Programme are trying to exterminate them with poisons, but the Harijans strongly object to these programmes, since a large part of their food supply is derived from rats.
11 For further discussion see Kathleen Gough, "Colonial Economics in Southeast India", Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, vol XII, no 13, 26 March 1977.
12 The virtual cessation of emigration by the peasants and workers of Thanjavur to Sri Lanka and Malaysia since the Second World War also, of course, increases the pressure on the land in Thanjavur.
I { Some of the landlords in the case have since been imprisoned as a result of a Supreme Court verdict in response to an appeal by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
II Census of India, 1971, series 19, Tamil Nadu, part X-B, Thanjavur District Census Handbook, vol 1, pp ix-x.