CHAPTER—V
SOME ASPECTS OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE
AND PRACTICE.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Land has been the basis of life in village communities in
India as elsewhere. Though artisans, personal servants
and village police pursued avocations other than agricul-
ture in earlier days, they were closely connected with land
which was offered to them as an inducement to stay in the
village and administer to the needs of the farming popula-
tion.
Land is still the basis of village-life, however weak it
has grown through the passage of time and through the
operation of different influences. Wander where he may
in search of employment in some industrial area or in
some city, being attracted by the glitter of its life, the
villager goes back at certain intervals to his village where
he owns a piece of land. In this respect, Atgam makes a
fascinating study. We have already seen how a good
number of persons annually emigrate from this village,
in search of service in the off season and come back
home as June returns to till their tiny plots of land
and reap a meagre crop. We now propose to study
how and to what extent these emigrants as well as the
total population of th§ village are associated with land as
a source of income. In other words, the theme of this
chapter is to study agriculture which, to the people, is
either a principal or a subsidiary source of income. We
shall first study the extent of the part played by agri-
culture in the life of the village and subsequently examine
a few salient features of agricultural practice of the peo-
ple.
THE EXTENT OF AGRICULTURAL WORK
An analysis of the different family-schedules yields the
following results regarding agriculture as a source of in-
come to the people: