Work in the Tamil Villages Some Experiences. (CONTRIBUTED).

India is the land of Agriculture and S0 per cent of its population live by tilling the land-"How often has this been said, often with great emphasis, when anybody pretending to be interested in India's development, pleads for improvement in agriculture-as the first item for consideration. There it begins and there it ends. Few try to go deeper than this and obtain at first hand a knowledge of the actual conditions and behaviour of the average ryot in the different parts of country, to see how he yields and co-operates with us for any improvement we may endeavour to achieve. It is easy to say that we should improve the agriculture of the land, ameliorate the socio-economic condi- tions of the ryot population and so on and so-forth, but it is only those who actually work in the field that can know the manifold but peculiar difficulties one has to experience before any thing can be achieved. The experiences narrated here though not too inany are quite significant and may seem important as well in connection with our efforts to improve the village and its agriculture. How much of an uphill task, this introduction of improved methods of agriculture is, for a prosperous rural population, will be well svident from these seemingly trivial observations