While research on the Indian economy, both at the present time, as also in the colonial period, has tended to concentrate on the agrarian sector, relatively little work has been done on the relationship between the rural and urban worlds. The two volumes now under review offer a welcome change from this one-sided focus. They seek to analyse the interaction of a substantial industrial and urban complex – that of the Jharia/Dhanbad coalfield and its allied industries—with the surrounding rural hinterland. Although the conclusions that can be derived from these studies cannot be feasibly extended to other regions, regional analysis of this nature provides considerable qualification to the conclusions reached by economists working at a national level. In particular, the study of the town-countryside relationship offers one way of approaching the question· of the terms of trade between the two dominant sectors of the economy. Whereas recent work on this subject has tended to focus almost exclusively on the somewhat narrow index provided by relative price ratios between agricultural and manufactured commodities, the wider, and to my mind, more significant matter of the respective conditions of production and subsequent exchange between the sectors is more amenable to analysis through regional studies of this variety.
Jan-Feb 1981, volume 5, No 1/2