ABSTRACT
The improvement of Indian villages and of the life which is lived in them is the improvement of India. Until comparatively lately the information about the condition of villagers and of village life has been extremely meagre. In the middle of the last century Hunter wrote an account, chiefly historical, of the rural conditions in Bengal, and in the early years of the present century Jacks wrote on the economic life of a Bengal district in a book which inaugurated the modern study of village conditions. The huge development of irrigation, particularly in North India, has as its principal end the prosperity of the country and, in the first instance, of the village population. The village is clean, and all the rubbish and nightsoil is put into the village manure pit, which is used to fertilize the crops, especially the irrigated crops.
