CHAPTER—XIV
THE ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE
PEOPLE
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The aim of such village studies is to examine the
economic condition of the people of a village with
the help of statistics. Graphic descriptions of the general
features of the economic life of a village, are apt to fall
flat, unless they are supplemented by a statistical presen-
tation of the economic life of the people. The object of
this chapter is to attempt such a statistical presentation of
the economic condition of the village community we have
studied so far. Income and expenditure are the two mea-
suring rods invariably used in this task. Indebtedness is
only a consequence of an excess of the latter over the
former.
So far as the income of the people is concerned, land,
labour and animals and in some cases, employment in out-
side areas, are the principal sources of income, The
method by which we have derived net receipts from these
different sources, and have entered them in different family
schedules, has already been explained in some of the pre-
ceding chapters. In some cases the details are given in
the appendices. It is, however, necessary to mention at
this stage three points :
(i) In the schedule, as we have constructed it, the in-
come from labour is classified into income from un-
skilled labour and, income from skilled labour. This
classification was necessary in order to attain precision.
The receipts from the latter kind of labour are generally
calculated at a higher rate than those from the former.
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