INTRODUCTION

TR A C T O R I Z A T I O N o f agr i cul tur e i n low-wage count r ies has been the center of one of the most vi rulent and emot iona l choice-of-techniques debate for the past 20 years. It is therefore not surpr i s ing that, apart f r o m spawning large quantities of theoret ical -conceptual l i terature and a massive amo u n t of partisan wr i t i n g , it has also led to a very substantial amount of careful emp i r i c a l wo r k at the mi c ro- and macr o levels. I n par t icular , there are now available a large n umb e r of farm- level t ractor surveys f r om practically every agrocl imat ic zone i n the I n d i a n subcontinent. However, many of these surveys are not easily accessible (masters and Ph.D. theses) or not easily comparable. T h e ma i n e f for t of this paper is to assemble the studies and present the i r f indings in a way which makes t h e m comparable across agrocl imat i c zones. Whatever me rit this s umma r y may have thus goes in large part to the patient (and sometimes u n r ewa r d i n g ) e f for t of the many researchers wh o assembled the basic facts ini t i a l ly. Of course, they cannot be hel d responsible for mistakes or mi s int e rpr e t a t ions wh i c h mi g h t have oc cur r e d in the summa r i z a t ion process.