At the core of the LAS is a gift to the Foundation of about 5,000 books and other publications by Yoshifumi Usami, retired Professor of Economics at the University of Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
The collection of books covers Indian economy and agriculture, including agronomy, agricultural economics (price policy, agricultural wages, the Green Revolution, and food policy) and demography, and cover the period from the late nineteenth century to about 2010. This part of the collection also includes related official serial publications, such as the Farm Management Studies (a complete set), Rural Labour Enquiry Reports, reports from the series titled Agricultural Wages in India, Agricultural Price Commission Reports, National Sample Survey Reports, and publications of the Census of India. There are also miscellaneous reports on agriculture- and rural development-related topics issued by the Government of India, State Governments, and other official agencies.
Economic history is a major area of Professor Usami’s interest and research, and various Commission Reports, statistical and other official documents of the colonial period, including Famine Commission Reports, and reports of the Royal Irrigation Commission, Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee, Royal Commission on Agriculture, some Land Revenue Settlement Reports, Provincial and District Gazetteers, and publications of the Board of Economic Enquiry, Punjab, are also part of the collection. There is a subsection of books on the history of Punjab with a focus on the Partition years, and on the urban development of Delhi.