ABSTRACT
The cultivation and use of the land in so vast a country as India must necessarily show enormous diversity and it may at once be stated that the popular idea that a very large part of the sub-continent is like the land of the lotus eaters. The great planting industries of tea, coffee, rubber and the like are the outstanding examples of the extension of large scale cultivation in India. The feature which is characteristic of rural life and of agriculture in India is the tenure of the land and the collection of the people in self-contained and largely self-governing villages. Much of the country included both in the alluvial plains, and in the rocky high lands and plateaux has a small and precarious rainfall. Irrigation has been developed in the desert and in the precarious tracts of India on a colossal scale, particularly in the areas included in the great alluvial areas of North India.
