464 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the consolidated holding. Prof. Jevons makes no provision to conserve the results of consolidation. Mr. Keatinge does not deal with consolidation at all. He is concerned only with the prevention of further fragmentation. But fragmentation, there will be in a holding even after it is entered as an economic holding. By his measure he will only succeed in preserving the holdings as they will be found at the time of registration, i.e., he will not allow them to be reduced in size. But they will be small and scattered all the same. Mr. Keatinge, notwithstanding his legislation, leaves the situation more or less as it exists. Real consolidation is, however, aimed at by Prof. Jevons and the Baroda Committee. The principles they advocate for the purpose are almost the same ; and so are their procedures for carrying it out.
As for the preservation of consolidated holdings Mr. Keatinge as well as the Baroda Committee establish the one-man rule of succession. The Baroda Committee would adopt this rule only when division of land would result in uneconomic holdings and then too would compel the successor to buy off the claims of the other dispossessed heirs. Mr. Keatinge would let the dispossessed heirs off without compensation.
A more serious criticism against these projects of consolidation consists in the fact they have failed to recognize that a consolidated holding must be an enlarged holding as well. If it is said that Indian agriculture suffers from small and scattered holdings we must not only consolidate, but also enlarge them. It must be borne in mind that consolidation may obviate the evils of scattered holdings, but it will not obviate the evils of small holdings unless the consolidated holding is an economic, i.e. an enlarged holding. The Committee as well as Mr. Keatinge have entirely lost sight of this aspect of the question. Prof. Jevons, alone of the advocates, keeps it constantly before his mind that consolidation must bring about in its train the enlargement of holdings.
IV
ENLARGEMENT
Granted that enlargement of holdings is as important as their consolidation we will now turn to the discussion of regulating their size. It is desired by all interested in our agriculture that our holdings should be economic holdings. We would have been more thankful to the inventors of this new, precise and scientific terminology had they given us a precise and scientific definition of an economic holding. On the other hand, it is believed that a large holding is somehow an economic holding. It may be said that even Prof. Jevons has fallen a victim to this notion. For when discussing what the size of a holding should be he dogmatically states that in the consolidated village the mode