Causes of Growth:

Nanawati and Anjaria have advanced the view that it was brought about by the increase of population. Such a view, however, can not explain the regional differences in the proportion of agricultural workers. In reality, the growth of this class was primarily brought about by the decay of the village handicrafts, the increasing indebtedness of the peasantry, and land mortgages.

As Gadgil has explained, the import of manufactured goods led to the decline of Indian handicrafts and forced the cottage worker to turn to land…… the only available occupation. Most of the persons displaced from cottage industries had to work as agricultural labourers.

With the introduction of the new land settlements, the cultivator “who had never before handled a coin in his life, was required to pay to the govt. twice a year a fixed sum of money, crop or no crop.”

In the early days, when commer­cialisation of agriculture and circulation of money had just begun, the farmer, though not poor otherwise, was very poor in terms of money and had often to seek the help of the money-lender for paying his revenue instalment.

Besides the heavy and rigid revenue demands of the govt., uncertainty of crops caused by natural calamities added to the farmer’s needs for borrowing. It is well to remember in this connection that between 1860—1908, famine or scarcity prevailed in one or the other part of the country in twenty out of forty nine years.

Yet another factor added to the farmer’s troubles. With the commercialisation of agriculture and the development of grain markets in the country side, the Indian farmer “entered the orbit of world prices.” Thus, to the uncertainties of rainfall for which he could curse his past misdeeds and pray to God, were added the fluctuations of world agricultural prices which brought about wide changes in his income.

His needs alone, whatever their intensity or urgency, could not have landed the farmer in debt had the govt. not placed, in his hands, a valuable asset against which credit