INDIA'S most impressive achievement since Independence is in the field of agriculture. Feeding and clothing a population of 690 million, more than the combined population of the USA and the USSR, is indeed a creditable performance. To realize the significance of this achievement, let us look back to the India before Independence. Canal irrigation began during the British period, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, when the country was plagued by droughts and famines. In Punjab, Madras and United Provinces ofAgra and Oudh large irrigation projects were launched by the Britishers. Up to the middle of the present century, extension in canal irrigation was the major input in agriculture. Even so, food grain production during the British period stagnated with an insignificant growth. rate (0.11 per cent annually), while the population rose at the rate of 1.5 per cent annually.

The Muhammedan historians of the Sultanate were mostly courtiers and qadis. They were contemporaries who had seen and taken part in the events they narrated. That is why their record of events is vivid and authentic. Their histories are, however, records of battles, conspiracies, revolts) murders and fratricides. Elliot remarks, 'Of domestic history, we have in our Indian Annalists absolutely nothing, and the same may be remarked of nearly all Muhammedan historians, except Ibn Khaldun. By them society is never contemplated, either in its conventional usages or recognised privileges; its constituent elements or mutual relations; in its established classes or popular institutions, in its private recesses or habitual intercourses. In notices of commerce, dbt agriculture, internal police, and local judicature, they are equally deficient.

One is constrained to remark that it is agriculture department and the condition of cultivators which were of least interest to the Muhammedan historians. May be, it was due to the fact that Islam is an urban religion, and the emphasis on the part of the Muhammedan elite was on administration, trade, commerce and urban life. As such, they considered agriculture as an insignificant activity not worthy of notice and those who practised it as persons of no consequence.