CONTENTS PAGE 1 91 Introduction and Historical Retrospect II The Organisation of Agricultural Research III Agricultural Improvement and the Subdivision and Fragmentation of OF THE MAIN REPORT. ABRIDGED REPORT I. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL RETROSPECT The Royal Commission on Agriculture in India is the first appointed specifically to examine and report on the conditions CHAPTERS I AND II of agriculture and rural economy in India. The Famine Commissions of 1880, 1898 and 1901, the Irrigation Commission of 1903 and the Committee on Cooperation of 1915 made many recommendations for the improvement of agriculture and for the promotion of the welfare and prosperity of the rural population. The Reports of the Famine Commissions were landmarks in the history of the agricultural development of India. The Famine Commissions were naturally, in the main, concerned with the steps necessary on the part of Government to diminish the severity of famine or to place the people in a better position to meet it. The Commission of 1880 arrived at the general conclusion that "it is to the improvement of the internal communications and the removal of all obstructions to the free course of trade, accompanied by the extension of irrigation in suitable localities and an improved agriculture that we must look for obtaining security in future against disastrous failures in the food supply." The proposals of this Commission powerfully influenced for good agrarian and administrative reform in India for the next twenty years. To the Commission of 1901, we owe the development of agricultural departments working on scientific lines for the improvement of agriculture and also the initiation of the co-operative credit movement. This Commission found that "the steady application to agricultural problems of research is the crying necessity of the time" but reinforced this with the warning that "security of the harvest only postpones the pressure of the population on the soil; it is prudence and knowledge and the practice of thrift alone which will relieve it." The necessity for an improvement in agricultural method and for agricultural research had been emphasised by preceding Commissions, but, in the early days, the time of agricultural departments was largely taken up with statistical work and with the elaboration of machinery to deal with famine conditions. Agricultural research was spasmodic and lacked continuity and there was little attempt at building up a scientific department, mainly because workers were few. By the beginning of this century, however, there was a great awakening of interest in the scientific study of agriculture in Great Britain and in India, and, as the result of the recommendations of the Famine Commission of 1901 and the Irrigation Commission of 1903, a forward policy in matters of agricultural research and improvement was embarked on by the Government of Lord Curzon, to whose far-sighted vision much of the progress of Indian agriculture must be attributed. MO Y 392-1 |