Elements of Upward Mobility for Agricultural Labourers in Tamil Districts, 1865-1925 1

In the conventional view of the changes in Indian rural society under British rule, the development of commercial agriculture and the monetisation sation of the economy led to the impoverishment of cultivators and the growth of stratification in rural society; landownership became concentrated in the hands of moneylenders and large farmers. ² However, Dharma Kumar's work using land revenue statistics for the Madras Presidency concluded that a clear tendency toward the concentration of land did not exist in South Indian districts. ³