One of the well-worn problems which have long engaged observers of the agrarian scene has been the uneven growth performance of Indian agriculture in different regions. In the north of the subcontinent there is the obvious contrast between the eastern and western portions of the Indo-Gangetic plain. While Bangladesh, Bengal, Bihar, and eastern U.P. have apparently remained sunk in stagnation and depression, western U.P., Haryana and the Punjab exhibit all the untidy signs of entrepreneurial activity and dynamic growth. Is not the expansion as straightforward as the phenomenon itself? The agriculturally secure regions were the first to enjoy prosperity and the first to fall victim to over-population, so that the centre of dynamic growth moved progressively away from the deltaic and lower riverine areas to the more thinly-held tracts of upper India, where the Pax Britannica and canal irrigation acted like a forced draught behind agricultural expansion. In this way, over the course of the nineteenth-century Lakshmi, the fickle goddess of fortune, betook herself with uneven tread westward from the lush verdure of Bengal until she has come to fix her temporary abode on the Punjab plain between Ludhiana and Lyallpur. The explanation has been applied over a narrower geographical span.