The Indian Government being minded to discover the economic condition of their lands, sent a Committee to inquire into it; and saw that it was good…

Cooperation, legislation, and the drive towards rural reconstruction in the Punjab comprised the immediate response to the problem of rural indebtedness in the province. From the Alienation of Land Act and the cooperative credit societies, a much wider push towards ‘rural reconstruction’ emerged, which encapsulated various ideas of reform as discussed in Chapter 3. Another development was the beginning of a discourse on rural affairs that was centred on statistical inquiry and intensive data gathering in the province. This culture of knowledge starting in the 1920s was significant for several reasons:

firstly, it emerged in a political climate where the government needed to show greater knowledge of its rural subjects after the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms. The research agenda and scope of the studies were also defined and limited by political considerations. Second, it signalled a global move towards statistical inquiry in agricultural life with similar questions being studied elsewhere. Such inquiries were the precursor to two fields of study that became more developed by the 1950s and 1960s: peasant studies and development studies. Third, the inquiries did not challenge the official narrative on various socio-economic issues and instead confirmed many existing colonial biases. And finally, in keeping with an argument made elsewhere in the book, the inquiries reaffirm the limited memory of development studies, in that they remain largely forgotten and unused. This chapter develops these points by discussing the emergence of this new culture of research during the interwar period.