India’s Poverty and It’s Solution

Published in 1964, India’s Poverty and its Solution is Charan Singh’s most substantive work. It lays out his clear ideological position on the need for a primarily agricultural society to give primacy to agriculture for inter-related social, economic, political and ecological reasons.

An update of his 1959 book Joint Farming X-rayed, which was written in opposition to the adoption of large scale co-operative farming as India’s agricultural policy by the Indian National Congress, Singh bolsters his devastating critique of joint farming with updated figures and tables.

Singh reiterates that the system of peasant proprietorship is best  suited  to India’s economic and social development, with small farms forming a bulwark of democracy, and also the basis of a certain way of life quite in contrast to industrialisation. Singh details an alternative model for India’s bottom-up economic development based on decentralised village industries, agricultural self-sufficiency and enhanced purchasing power of the vast majority of Indians dwelling in the villages.