AGRICULTURE : In agriculture, mutual cooperation at pre­sent takes the following major forms.

    (i) Collective ownership : Such plots are cultivated through collective labour and crops are also shared collectively.

    (ii) Collective funds : Out of such funds loans in the form of cash and seeds, repayable after the harvest, are made available to the members of the fund. Machineries are also made available to the members at a nominal rent.

    (iii) Collective granary : Grains collected as levy, subscription etc., are stored in a collective granary, erected, through collective free labour, on a plot of land under the occupation of the committee of concerned peasants. In times of crisis, grain-loans are advanced from the granary to needy peasants. Such loans are usually to be repaid after the harvest, but under certain special circum­stances, they are also transformed into grants.

    (iv) Collective free labour : Peasants offer free labour for repairing ahars, tanks etc, for digging wells as well as for constructing dams. Several such dams have been erected within an amazingly short span of time, which are presently irrigating a sizeable stretch of land. Naturally, landowners benefit most from such dams, while the landless labourers do not get any benefit at all simply because they do not have any land to irrigate. Some measures need to be devised to compensate the latter, perhaps by levying some suitable tax on the recipients of these irrigation facilities.

Apart from such collective endeavours, which are all managed by concerned committees of the peasants, one also witnesses such forms of mutual cooperation as peasants helping one another with free labour, or exchanging ploughs, oxen and other materials.

Housing : Here mutual cooperation takes the following two major forms :

    (i) construction of houses through collective free labour ; and

    (ii) settlement of new colonies through collective labour under the supervision of concerned committees. Sonatola (in Sahar PS of Bhojpur), Madhuban (in Masaurhi PS of Patna), Srabannagar (in Kako PS of Gaya) are three such colonies settled through collective labour.