New Delhi, Feb. 16 -- Vitthaldas Balkisan Asawa, 57, grows sugarcane in Chanegaon village, in Sangamner subdivision of Maharashtra's Ahilyanagar district. When I ask what has changed in farming, he doesn't start with the weather or the price of cane. He starts with the vanishing joint families.

"What is happening," he says, "is that the joint family did not live."

He isn't romanticising it. He's describing a practical advantage the old arrangement had: when his grandfather's house held 30 people, farm decisions didn't require an appointment with an officer or a visit to a university. Somebody in the house had seen the crop up close. Somebody had tried a method last season. Advice travelled through courtyards and meals, through evenings ...