28 SOCIAL SCIENTIST All this would indicate that the usual kind of comparisons of farms of different sizes cannot be the sole basis for formulating policies regarding the organization of production in agriculture* In particular, those who are convinced that small is beautiful must not forget that big is powerful and that therefore a peaceful coexistence of the two within the existing organizational forms may not be feasible in the long run. Hence those who are concerned with policy questions now must also know what the long-term objectives of policy should be. (This paper is based on a larger work, "Studies in the Dynamics of Rural Transformation", which was carried out as a research project financed by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, and is being published as a research monograph with the title. Dynamics of Rural Trans for motion-A Study of Tamil Nadu: 1950-1975, by Orient Longman, Madras). 1 The literature on this subject is now familiar. For a critical summary and bibliography sec Jagdish N Bhagwati and Sukhamoy Chakravarty, "Contributions to Indian Economic Analysis: A Survey", The American Economic Review, Vol LTX, No 4, Part 2, Sept 1969, and the extensive bibliography in G R Saini, Farm Size, Resource- Use Efficiency and Income Distribution, New Delhi, Allied Publishers, 19 79. 2 Ashok Rudra, "Farm Size and Yield per Acre*', Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, July 1968. ^ Sec G R Saini, op cit. A Ashok Rudra and Amartya Sen, "Farm Size and Labour Use: Analysis and Policy'*, Economic and Political Weekly, Annual Number, February 1980. 0 This is a point which Rudra and Sen draw attention to in their joint paper. 6 See K Bharadwaj, Production Conditions in Indian Agriculture, London, Cambridge University Press, 1974. 7 Conducted by the Directorate of Economics, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation. 8 Details of the "poverty line" calculations for Tamil Nadu are given in Dynamics of Rural Transformaion (as cited in the acknowledgcmentj. 9 See C T Kurien and Josef James, Economic Change in Tamil Nadu-A Regionally and Functionally Disaggregated Study, New Delhi, Allied Publishers, 1979. 10 Census of India 1971, Series I: India, Miscellaneous Studies, paper 1 of 1974, Report on Resurvey ofEconomic Questions-Some Results. n For details sec V K Ramachandran, "Agricultural Labourers in the Working Po" pulation of Tamil Nadu" Bulletin, Madras Development Series, Vol X, No. 3, March 1980. 12 For fuller documentation see Dynamics of Rural Transformation, Ch.2. 18 R P Pathak, K R Ganapathy and Y U K Sarma : "Shift in Pattern of Asset Holdings of Rural Households, 1961-62 to 1971-72", Economic and Political Weekly, 19 March 1977. 14 See Robert Dorfman, Paul A Samuelson and Robert M Solow, Linear Programming and Economic Analysis, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1958, ch 13. 16 "Small farmers . . . were found to be using less capital and fewer purchased non-labour inputs per hectare, but more man-days per hectare than were the larger farm units .... If one has, as a shorter-run objective, research for the productive use of excess rural man- power which cannot be employed in towns and cities, then labour intensity takes on the virtue of employment generation. Another virtue of labour intensity in farming is [that it can provide an economy with agricultural