Introduction:
The aim of this thesis has been to explore in detail the process of agrarian restructuring which has been occurring recently in ethnically diverse communities of central Nepal. It has been concerned, in particular, with ways in which the new-found relative affluence of Gurung households has had wide-ranging effects on the household strategies of ethnic groups and on the resource base, including forest.
One measure of the agrarian restructuring that had taken place in the two-village study area in recent decades was growth in the number of landless households. Another was in the magnitude of 'outside earnings’, compared with the production value of village agriculture. By 1989 26 per cent of households were landless and 'outside earnings' comprised 38 per cent of total village income. By 1994, the changes in both indicators were proceeding in the same direction : that is, a further increase in the number of landless households was occurring (but for how long, before there is significant out-migration?), while at the same time off-farm income was growing in importance, locally as well as nationally.
These two changes appear to be closely linked in Kaski District at the current stage of agrarian restructuring, through the mechanism of cross-ethnic economic interdependence discussed in Chapters 3, 4 and particularly in Chapter 5. This interdependence was manifest in the within-village circulation, to a considerable extent, of Gurungs’ ‘outside income’; circulated through wage employment across ethnic groups. In addition, Gurung households with outside earnings were commonly reducing their dependence on farming. And so despite increase in the number of landless households, there had not been (May 1994) significant out-migration of the landless (mainly members of the Occupational Caste), mainly because of economic interdependence. This interdependence across ethnic groups was continuing in the 1990s even though the recent socio-political changes in Nepal discussed in Chapter 7, were causing greater awareness of ethnic identities and, in a culturally conservative fashion, were tending to reverse cross-ethnic relationships of all kinds.
The overall conclusion from the preceding seven chapters is that the restructuring of the household and village economy in this village area of central Nepal, as a consequence of off-farm income-earning activities, has been critical so fa r in maintaining household income and in avoiding further pressure for the expansion of land for cultivation. These benefits of restructuring have resulted mainly from changes in the livelihood strategies of different ethnic groups, involving greater economic interdependence for land and labour, with associated income transfers from one ethnic group to another. Increased economic interdependence has helped many low income households, especially members of the Occupational Caste, to break even, or even to reduce deficits in their annual household budgets. In this way, in the study area, the most extreme poverty by Nepal’s standards has been avoided.
Main findings:
The middle hills region of cental Nepal, in which the study villages are located, is characterised by high population pressure on land and by small and fragmented farm holdings (Chapter 1). By the late 1980s the area of farmland in the study villages was insufficient for the production of basic staple foods for about 60 per cent of the
ethnic groups in their access to resources including land, forest and education (Chapter 2). The recent restructuring of the economy has brought many changes which have been helpful in maintaining, so far, the viability of the village economy. This is in contrast to the views of ‘moral economists’ [mainly Scott (1976)] who argued that the increased mobility of villagers to the outside world, such as the movement of Gurung villagers in this area, would cause social disintegration, decline in production and erosion of the ability of village communities to cope with population pressure. The main findings of this study are summarised below, with more comprehensive discussion in the pages which follow:
* Population pressure for the expansion of land for cultivation has been contained. Some marginal and more distant lands have been abandoned from crop cultivation and converted into forest plantations. This has helped in conservation of the environment (Chapter 4).
* There have been marked differences in access to ‘outside employment’ and village resources between ethnic groups. Brahmin, Chettri and Gurung ethnic groups have been favoured. Members of the Occupational Caste continued to be disadvantaged, because of their lack of access to resources and education.
. ‘Outside earnings’ have (so far) benefitted mainly Gurung households. This situation exists because of Gurungs access to remunerative military service in foreign lands during the 3-4 decades after World War II (Chapter 3). Even though Gurung households have gradually moved away from their earlier dependence on traditional farming, they have been able to derive half the production from their rented (out) land, by share-farming, without cost (Chapter 4).
. In the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s the intensification of farming on irrigated land (khet) benefitted Brahmin and Chettri households because of their ownership of
farmland. The government programs which were mainly concerned with increase in production also benefitted them. They were also able to rent (in) khet land from Gurung households (Chapter 4). White collar jobs available within the country were also more readily available to Brahmins and Chettris because of their better education (Chapter 3).
. Occupational Caste households were not able to derive direct benefits from the recent changes as they were neither able to get jobs in foreign armies nor had land to cultivate. Because of their lack of education, the off-farm jobs that they could obtain were less remunerative (Chapter 3). Wage employment created within the village, as economic interdependence has grown across ethnic groups, has helped them to maintain their livelihoods (Chapter 5).
* The viability of the village economy has been maintained. Extreme poverty has been avoided as poor households obtained wage employment within the village; and by increasing the income of Brahmin and Chettri households through agricultural intensification and the share-farming of Gurung land.
. The availability of low-cost labour provided by members of the Occupational Caste has facilitated economic interdependence, but the main benefits have been appropriated, so far, by Brahmin, Chettri and Gurung households.
. Economic interdependence across ethnic boundaries has also helped in reducing the pressure on villages’ forest resources. There has been increased barter (exchanging labour for fodder) animal-feed and a reduction of the animal population.
* Because of the preceding two outcomes, within-village disparities in income and in ownership o f assets (mainly land) have grown. But the circulation of ‘outside earnings’, earned by Gurung households, has also helped many households to remain in villages with a modestly improved living standard; and to maintain their traditional peasant way of life.
Growing within-village economic disparities are incremental to the already existing socio-economic inequalities which had shaped the access position of households to resources, including education. Households having access to resources were in a better position to benefit from recent changes. This has, in effect, contributed to the
perpetuation of caste-related inequalities.
As these main findings indicate, it is the economic interdependence across ethnic groups which has been helping the disadvantaged households to maintain their livelihood. But with the recent changes as obseved in the early 1990s, especially the begining of decline in Gurungs’ income from foreign military service, it seems likely that this interdependence may be diminished and perhaps gradually fade away.
These main outcomes of the changes in the last three decades are discussed in more detail below. At the end of the chapter the prospect of further agrarian restructuring and possible ways to help poor village households, in the light of the findings of this study, are outlined.
* Population pressure for expansion o f cultivation has been contained:
The central finding of this study, as a contribution to the continuing debate about population growth and land resources in Nepal, is that in the two-village study area and seemingly more widely, agrarian restructuring has so far allowed the pressure of
population on land resources to be contained. Many writers on the Himalayan mountain environment have forecast that as a consequence of population increase, marginal areas in Nepal will be ever more intensively cultivated at the cost of forest and the hill slopes, so further accelerating soil erosion. The vicious sequence of population growth - poverty - environmental degradation was conceptualised in a pessimistic 'theory of Himalayan degradation'^ by Ives and Messerli (1988), and earlier in even more alarmist forecasts of eco-disaster by Eckholm (1975) and others.
In contrast to these forecasts however, evidence from the two-village study (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) shows that the injection of substantial outside earnings into the Gurung quarter of village households has triggered significant flow-on effects across ethnic divides. The resulting economic interdependence, notably in the use of land and labour, has helped to cushion increasing population pressure on resources in the late 1970s and 1980s.
In line with their alarmist vision for Nepal's future, Blaikie et. al. (1980) argued that the lack of opportunities for off-farm employment and the underdevelopment of Nepal's
1 The theory of Himalayan degradation is summarised by Ives and Messerli in eight postulates. They are mentioned here briefly: 1. explosion of population due to the modern health care system. 2. doubling of population in every 27 years (with 2.67 per cent per annum population growth rate) and the increased demand of fuelwood, timber and land to grow food. 3. massive deforestation due to reasons discussed above. 4. deforestation and cultivation on marginal land would cause catastrophic increase in erosion and loss of productive land. 5. increased run-off and flooding due to siltation in the river basin; drying up of springs and wells. 6. loss of fertile top soil into the ocean. 7. continued loss of agricultural land and top-soil lead to another round of deforestation. 8. consequently, another vicious circle is linked to the first one. Animal waste is used as fuel and further deteriorating the quality of soil.
agricultural and industrial sectors would lead to social disaster-. Even though their
argument is still correct, to an extent, in emphasising the lack of sufficient opportunities for otf-farm employment within the country and in emphasising the likely repercussions for the quality of life in rural Nepal, Blaikie and his colleagues (15 years ago) gave little attention to prospective ways in which off-farm employment might be increased. In contrast, I have shown in this intensive study of a characteristic rural area in central Nepal that economic interdependence within the village community has become a major factor in the past 15-20 years, with effects which increase the efficiency of resource use and put less pressure on the physical environment. This development has not been peculiar to one locality. Instead, at the national level the contribution of off-farm income has grown significantly in the 15 years or so since Blaikie’s research (1980) was published. It is now reported that more than half Nepal’s income comes from the non-farm sector, while its contribution was about 35 per cent in the early 1980s (NPC, 1986). The labour market in rural areas has become stronger, even though remuneration in this sector is low in
comparison to outside employment. We noted (Chapters 3 and 4) that the increased opportunities for within-village wage employment have provided critical support for landless households, notably those belonging to the Occupational Caste.
The empirical evidence in the two-village study area shows that circulation of Gurungs’ ‘outside earnings’ has also been helpful in conservation of the environment. The process of transfer of resources and production across ethnic boundaries, the result of cash income being circulated, has helped not only in containing the need for expansion of the
cultivated land, but also in leading to the abandonment of crop cultivation in sloping and marginal areas. The abandonment of cultivation in low-yielding khoria and in distant uplands, as documented in Chapter 4, clearly illustrates this point. These marginal lands are now available for the planting of trees, an exciting development from the conservation viewpoint, and in some cases this has already been accomplished.
* The impact o f ‘outside earnings’:
Significant changes in the Lachok-Riban study area were initiated by the increased contribution of off-farm income to household economy, notably in the form of Gurung earnings from military service in the British and Indian armies and through the recent migration of wealthier households to urban areas for the investment of accumulated capital. This suggests a pattern of economic change in the villages of the middle hills region of Nepal that appears to be following the structural changes which previously occurred in the agrarian economies of East Asian countries, mainly Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (Chenery and Sryquin, 1975; Fei and Ranis, 1964; Lewis, 1955; Oshima,
1986, 1983). But in these countries, agrarian changes have taken place mainly in response to rural industrialisation, leading to a simultaneous improvement in incomes in both the farm and off-farm sectors within rural or semi-urban areas. And so farming may be seen as increasingly a part-time activity in central Nepal, following the same trend but later than in many other Asian countries.
In the Lachok-Riban study area and in the villages of the middle hills region, in contrast to the experience in many other Asian countries but similar to those instances where remittances have been a main factor, ‘outside’ income has been generated since the 1950s mainly as a result of foreign labour migration. Internal migration within the country has
- "Expansion of 'marginal' employment opportunities in the administration for domestic producers may have
reached a peak; work for the Nepalese in India has probably declined...and it would be safe to say that prospects here will certainly not improve. As the hill economy becomes increasingly precarious and the Terai's
potential disappears, the dependency relationship between the Region and India will become clearer. In addition, we see no reason to believe that the peasantry of Nepal will discover a collective political expression of its needs which reaches beyond mere populist rhetoric in time to save millions of people from
taken place only to a limited extent. This is mainly due to the lack of large-scale
development of industries, or other job-creating enterprises, in the urban areas of Nepal. It is difficult to envisage that the experience of the East Asian countries will soon be repeated at all comprehensively in the villages of Nepal. By 1994, it seemed that the significance of urban employment was growing, if still at a rather slow rate.
One of the distinct patterns of change in the Lachok-Riban study area is that Gurungs’ access to outside income has helped in the creation of wage employment opportunities in the farm sector. By the late 1980s and early 1990s Occupational Caste households depended mainly on this wage employment. When the two villages were first studied in
1989-90 much of this employment appeared to be of recent origin, dating from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The accumulation of ‘outside earnings’ appears to be leading to a gradual retreat of Gurung households from traditional farming, mainly because their ‘outside employment’ (and army pensions) are so remunerative, in the perceptions of villagers. Gradually also, Gurung households are turning to urban investment, again because it is more remunerative than investing capital and labour in the village. Off-farm work undertaken by Brahmins was also seen to be more rewarding than farming (Chapter 3), but they were not heavily involved in outside employment. By the end of the 1980s Brahmin and Gurung households derived about 25 per cent and 60 per cent respectively of their total income from the off-farm sector, compared with about 9 per cent for Occupational Caste households.
* Agricultural intensification and increased renting of farmland (mainly khet): Agricultural restructuring in the study area has been accompanied by greater
intensification of farming and increased renting of land (mainly khet). This has also added to the intra-village economic disparities between households. Government programs like irrigation, the provision of credit and new technical inputs (such as improved seeds) also helped in the intensification of farming. But benefits of these changes went mainly to Brahmin and Chettri households because they owned more land, mainly khet. They now grow three crops each year in most of their khet (lowland) and two to three crops in pakho (upland). About 30 years ago they grew only a single crop. By the early 1990s they rented (in) land, mainly khet, from Gurungs. Many Gurung households were able to rent out a part of their land because of their involvement in ‘outside employment’. In many instances they needed to rent out some of their farmland, because (with one or more men away from the village) they did not have enough labour for efficient farming. These Gurung households also benefitted from share-farming as they were able to receive half the production of rented (out) land, without cost.
Since more than 90 per cent of the Occupational Caste households living in the two- village study area at the end of the 1980s had no access to land, they did not obtain direct benefits from changes in crop production. In consequence, government programs related to agriculture also did not benefit them directly. As they lacked other resources, like animals, they also did not seek more land to use on a rental basis. Wage labour employment within the village was the main source of income for these households. Despite the gradual reduction in the sizes of farm holdings overall in the Lachok-Riban study area, to an average 0.75 ha in 1988/89, wage labour opportunities were increasing because of labour migration, in the case of Gurung households, and from intensification of farming in the case of Brahmins and Chettris. About 80 per cent of such wage
employment was taken up by members of the Occupational Caste. The availability of low- cost labour from Occupational Caste households helped Gurung households to cultivate a part of their land and Brahmin and Chettri households to rent (in) Gurung land. But despite such wage employment opportunities, the economic standing of many Occupational Caste households has remained low and vulnerable.
* Economic interdependence across ethnic boundaries:
The outstanding feature of agrarian restructuring in the two-village study area, evident in 1989-90 and even more so in 1994, is the creation of diversity in household livelihood strategies within the village, with many households looking now across ethnic group boundaries for land to rent and for wage employment. Gurungs' access to off-farm income has enabled Brahmin and Chettri families to expand their farming activities