Caste and Landlessness in South India

Abstract

In 1956 there were 16.3 million agricultural labour households in India, roughly one out of three for Indian agriculture as a whole. Their number has been rapidly increasing; in 1900 only 12 per cent of the agricultural population were landless labourers. It is tempting to see the creation of this huge landless class as yet another verification of a general theory of development which seems to apply to Japan and to much of South-East Asia, as well as to a great deal of Western experience. Such a theory would explain the growth of this class in terms of the weakening of village communities, the breaking down of traditional patterns of land tenure, the spreading of indebtedness and the consequent dispossession of the peasantry, and it would find the chief cause of these changes in the monetisation of the economy.