48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
period. But the financing programme has another useful purpose to serve. It will begin the process of containing ihe usurious exploiters who very often happen to be the landlords and jotedars. The organized movement of bargadars has gained momentum under the impact of Operation Barga as a result of which the landlords smdjotedars have been losing their grip on the rural society. The cumulative effect of the twin programmes will be to expedite the process of polarization of the rural people in two camps of exploiters and exploited, and thus prepare the ground for an all-out attack on the feudal and semi-feudal agrarian relations prevailing in the state.
SUHAS CHATTOPADHYAY
1 Bargadar means sharecropper. A bar^adar has been denned in the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955, as a person who under the system generally known as adhi, barga or bhag cultivates the land of another person on condition of delivering a share of the produce of such land to that person and includes a person who under the system generally known as kishani cultivates the land of another person on condition of receiving a share of the produce of such land from that person.
2 Reoricntation Camp at Halusai, Polba, Dist Hooghly, May 18, 1978 to May 20,
1978. document prepared by the Directorate of Land Records and Surveys, Government of West Bengal. 8 Mouza is the lowest unit of revenue administration, comprising one or more villages.
4 Board of Revenue, West Bengal, Workshop on Land Reforms, June 23.24, 1978.
5 These figures were given by the Director of Land Records and Surveys, Government of West Bengal.
6 Asim Mukhopadhyay, ^Operation Barga", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XIV, No 37, September 15, 1979, pp 1566-1567.
7 Ibid. '
8 Ibid.
9 Board of Revenue, West Bengal, Workshop of Land Reforms, June 23-24, 1978 and Workshop on Land Reforms (II), May 4-5, 1979.
10 Government of West Bengal, Bank Loan and West Bengal, statistical report prepared by combined statistical cell of the Board of Revenue and Land Utilisation and Reforms, and Land and Land Revenue Department.
11 Debabrata Bandyopadhyay, ^Operation Barga and Land Reforms'*, in From Tebhaga to Operation Barga (in Bengali), Board of Revenue, West Bengal,
1979. p31.