An Introduction to Co-operation in India. By C. F. Strickland,
I.C.S. (H. Milford. 3s. 6d. net.)—This little volume, the first of a series entitled India of To-day, is very well written and gives a lucid account of the progress of co-operation in India and of the special difficulties which it has to face in the ignorance and improvidence of thepeasant and in the wiles of the money-lender and the corrupt native official. Under an Act of 1904 about fifty thousand societies have been established. Nine-tenths of them are agricultural -credit societies, of the Raiffeisen type, with nearly one million seven hundred and fifty thousand members. Most of them are very small and have little capital, but the author declares that they are making headway, especially in Bombay and the Punjab, and that the peasants are learning by experience what a good thing it is to be free from the money- lender's clutches and from the village fends.
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