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*ON SMALL HOLDERS’ RELIEF BILL : 1

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Sir, I am afraid whether I shall be able to finish all that I have to say on this bill within the ten minutes allotted to me by you. However I will try my best and will be very brief.

This bill proposes to solve the two problems which affect the agriculturists of this presidency. One is the problem of scattered farms and other is the problem of small farms. I do not think that any honourable member who has listened to the speech of my honourable friend the Settlement Commissioner will deny that the scattered farms are an evil and that that evil should be cured as far as possible. I agree with him that there are a great many disadvantages in having scattered farms and so far that part of the bill is concerned I agree that there should be consolidation. Coming to the question of small farms I must say that I differ from the honourable mover of the bill on the question that small farms are unprofitable. Sir, the honourable member Mr. Anderson loaded us almost with figures showing how small the existing farms were and what were the difficulties that were dependent upon the smallness of the farms. I admit there are difficulties in the existence of small farms but I do not admit that small farms are necessarily unprofitable or uneconomic. I do not understand what is the definition of the word “uneconomic” as it is used by the honourable mover of the bill or the honourable member the Settlement Commissioner. Sir, as I understand the term I should like to state that whether the farm is economic or uneconomic does not necessarily depend upon the size of the farm. It depends and in fact it varies with what we call in economics other factors of production. It varies with labour. It varies with capital. If a farmer has got for instance the means to employ increased labour and if he has not got any very large capital to invest then I submit that if this farm is small it would not be proper to call it uneconomic on that account. That being my position, Sir, I would have very much liked to hear from the mover of the bill and also, from the Settlement Commissioner that in our country we have a plethora of capital and that we had large agricultural equipment for a highly efficient sort of production. If they had shown that was the case then we could have agreed with them that the small farms made production

*B.L.C. Debates, Vol. XXI, pp. 607-10, dated 10th October 1927.