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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 3, p. 2.

2 THE IYDI) 4 N EM3PIRE [CHAP. The rural In addition to the classes above enumerated, the village commu- population nities contain many other members whose employment depends nearly entirely on the cultivator, and who are therefore ordinarily supported agricul- from the produce of the village fields. Many persons too conm- tural. bine agriculture, as a subsidiary pursuit, with some other occu- pation. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural population of India live, directly or indirectly, by agriculture. Increase of A comparison of the census returns of I89I and 90oi shows landless that the classes enumerated in the foregoing table increased during ten years approximately as follows:- Cattle-breeders and attendants . 331,000 Landowners and tenants . 2, 53,ooo Labourers . . . 16,736,ooo00 Growers of special products 367,ooo Supervisors of estates, &c. 00oo,ooo The number of agricultural labourers nearly doubled. The increase is largely due to changes in classification; but a con- siderable landless class is developing which involves economic danger, because the increase has been most marked in districts where the rural population is already congested or in Provinces in which there is special liability to periodic famine. Even in normal seasons the ordinary agricultural labourers in some tracts earn a poor and precarious livelihood. They are employed on the land only during the busy seasons of the year, and in slack times a few are attracted to large trade centres for temporary work. As trade industries develop this attraction to towns will increase. Generally speaking, how- ever, the Indian peasant clings to the neighbourhood of his own home, however much it may be overcrowded. Land There is still plenty of land in India for the whole of the available in sparsely rural people. Good agricultural dry-crop land lies waste, populated notably in Central India and the Central Provinces, because tracts. there are not enough people or cattle for cultivation. In other parts (particularly in the Deccan), with a climate at least equally precarious, cultivation has extended from the best to the very poorest descriptions of soil. The cultivators of these poorer soils make only a bare living in favourable seasons, and, with their dependants, flock to relief works in famine years. Agricultural labourers migrate from Bengal and the Central Provinces to Assam, from the United Provinces to Bengal, from Madras and Chittagong to Burma; and, outside of India, to Ceylon, Mauritius, South Africa, British Guiana, and other colonies in search of agricultural or other employment. But, speaking generally, migration or emigration has worked