Give a account of observation of change in shape and size of the village?
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Answer:
Gilbert Slater, the first professor of economics at Madras University, published his book, Some South Indian Villages, in 1916 following a survey of some villages in Tamil Nadu by his students.
2016 marks the centenary of the publication of this book. While this was not the first survey of villages, it was definitely the first systematic approach to studying rural India through village surveys.
The tradition has continued to this date, with many researchers using comprehensive village surveys to understand the process of change in rural India.
These have included not just single-visit surveys of villages but also a large number of villages which have been surveyed repeatedly. The Slater villages have also been surveyed at different intervals, the last time in 2010.
The other notable village which has been surveyed seven times, once in each decade since independence, is the north Indian village of Palanpur.
The availability of large-scale secondary data has not diminished the role of village surveys but, in fact, has helped in improving our understanding of the process of change. At a time when there are conflicting trends emerging from the national accounts on the state of the economy, it is interesting to look at the village surveys to understand the changing nature of villages and rural India. An important caveat is in order here. There are more than half a million villages in India and each of them are unique in their social and economic composition. So is the process of change in these villages and the nature of studies of these villages. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify certain themes and broad contours of change which resonate across states and villages within them.