India and the Indians

by Edward Fenton Elwin

CHAPTER XLVI

AGRICULTURE IN INDIA

Agricultural colleges. Indian soil exhausted; need of chemical manures. Signs of progress among farmers. The city sweepings. Sugar cane; hospitalities connected with it; we are invited; our reception; the juice from the cane; its produce in other forms. Potatoes. The Indian evening; its rapid approach. Return of the cattle.

The Government of India are spending large sums on agricultural research. They have a College of Agriculture on an extensive scale at Pusa, in Bengal, and another big college near Poona has just been completed. These handsome buildings, with their chemical laboratories, lecture rooms, and English professors, seem at the first glance strangely remote from the homely farmer in his native village, and the first inclination is to suggest that these colleges will only produce a crop of ornamental figure-heads, who will graduate in agriculture, but who will make no practical use of the knowledge which they have acquired.

But the aim of these colleges is not quite so visionary as one might think. The Government realises that it will be long before the influence of the college reaches the small farmer in his village. The real point is that the soil of India is worn out through continued cropping without manuring, and it now only yields a small percentage of what it might produce, if properly treated. Farmyard manure, such as the English farmer so largely depends upon for the enrichment of his land, does not exist in India. This is partly because the cattle are roaming about all day, and as a rule are only gathered into sheds at night; partly because the coarse stalks of the native kinds of grain are not suitable for stable litter like English straw; but chiefly because the droppings from the cattle are made up into flat cakes and dried in the sun, which are then used as fuel in conjunction with a certain amount of wood. This custom is so rooted that it would be hopeless to try and modify it. Nor indeed is there any other fuel available. It is long before coal will find its way into common use for cooking purposes.

The moral of this is, that the only solution of the problem is to be found in the introduction of chemical manure. But this can only be done effectually after prolonged experiments. In a country so vast and so varied as India the varieties of soil are great, and the climatic conditions manifold. All sorts of different crops are grown. Hence the experiments necessary to find out how this variety is to be successfully treated must be spread over a long period of time, and results can only be arrived at gradually. Even in the process of irrigation, which at one time appeared to be such a simple matter, because where an ample supply of water could be secured the genial sun seemed to do all the rest, the lapse of years is revealing the fact that repeated irrigation produces certain deleterious chemical changes in the soil, which might ultimately become disastrous to the production of the crop. Hence experiments have to be made to determine to what extent irrigation must be restricted, and how the adverse chemical conditions can be counteracted.

When facts have been ascertained, their dissemination and acceptance is another problem. To accomplish this a good deal of the pioneer work, as with most progressive steps in India, must be done by Englishmen. Indians, however well instructed, would not be listened to in the first instance with confidence by their fellow-countrymen. They would suspect that self-interest was at the back of their advice, and the chemical manure which they recommended would, on that account, be distrusted. Hence, at present, a good many of the lecturers, and even some of the inspectors who are to travel in the districts to advise and assist the farmers in agricultural matters, have to be Englishmen. But it is hoped that their places will gradually be taken by those Indians whom they are now instructing.

Although farmers all the world over are conservative and opposed to novelties, they generally end by adopting improvements when they have realised that they are remunerative. Yerandawana village being close to Poona City, the farmers can procure for their land the street sweepings, which are sold by the municipality at so much a load. The farmers see the difference between land which has been manured and that which has not. They spend, what is to them, large sums of money on this litter, and they do so readily because they find that they are abundantly repaid by the increase in their crops. Street sweepings and city litter can, of course, only be procured in the immediate vicinity of large towns, and it is limited in quantity, so that this kind of manure does not go far in enriching the impoverished Indian soil. If farmers are able to see that chemical manure produces the same result as the litter, it is reasonable to suppose that in process of time they would be equally ready to buy the new agent.

Sugar cane is undoubtedly the most beautiful in appearance of all Indian crops; and when the cane is being converted into raw sugar, this is one of the most animated rural sights. The process takes place in the open air in a corner of the field itself, or else close by. Although it involves plenty of work and all is stir and bustle, it is a time which the workers enjoy. They encamp on the spot, and it is a sort of prolonged picnic.[3]