The Agricultural Economy

The economy of Bhaktapur, like that of Nepal as a whole, is fundamentally agricultural.^[6] The city is ringed with farmlands. Bhaktapur's farmers, typically of Newar farmers (and in contrast to Indo-Nepalese farmers who live in isolated farmhouses on their farmlands) live within the city—where they are integral members of its urban life—and walk to their farms to work them as necessary. Some 66 percent of the "economically active" population of urban Bhaktapur worked in farming according to the 1971 census. For the rural communities, the smaller towns and villages of Bhaktapur district, the figure was 76 percent. This relatively small difference illustrates the fact that Bhaktapur and its hinterland do not represent the familiar urban-peasant polarization, which is, and has long been, prevalent elsewhere. Bhaktapur is an agricultural city surrounded by smaller agricultural towns and villages. Most of its crops are grown for local consumption, mostly for the consumption of the farming families themselves.

The main crops grown in Bhaktapur (listed in order of the amount of land devoted to their cultivation) are rice, wheat, and maize (used for animal feed), followed by crops grown in much smaller quantities—millet, potatoes, oil seed, barley, sugarcane, and a large variety of vegetable crops, such as pulses, peppers, onions, soya beans, tomatoes, and ginger.^[7] The fields are irrigated, and those on the hillsides are terraced. Land use is very intense.^[8] Crops are rotated between a rice crop, and, depending on the nature of the field, a wheat or vegetable crop. The fields are cultivated by means of small hand tools.^[9]

Farms are worked by most able bodied members of a farming family,

male and female.^[10] In a study of the total income (that is, both cash and kind) of a sample of farming families in Bhaktapur Wachi (1980) reports that for 70 percent of her sample farming accounted for more than 70 percent of their household cash income, while for 11.5 percent of the households it accounted for 50 to 70 percent of their income, and for 11.5 percent it accounted for 30 to 50 percent of their income. All of the households in her survey supplemented their crop income in various ways—by some limited sale of animal products (meat, eggs, milk), by income from various trades and crafts (such as weaving, cap-making, yogurt-making), by wage labor (construction, working for other farmers, as assistants in city offices or as laborers on city projects), and from the rental of land or, rarely, through local commerce in something other than farm products. Time devoted to other sources of income is flexible, allowing people to work on the farms at the times when most labor is needed.

Farming households were able to barter grain for some supplies and services, but they needed cash to pay land taxes, to buy goods at bazaar shops, for trips to Kathmandu, and so on.^[11] That cash came from the nonfarming activities noted, and from the sale of some farm products, particularly grain, some of which is sold to intermediate merchants for the Kathmandu market.

Wachi (1980; also personal communication) reports that about 60 percent of the farming households owned some of the lands that they farmed. Only 2.3 percent of the households owned all the land that they cultivated, but another 58 percent owned some of the land they worked and supplemented it with additional rented lands. The remainder were non-land-owning tenant farmers,^[12] and a very few itinerant farm laborers, working only for others. According to Wachi's study, the land rents amounted to about 25 to 28 percent of the value of their produce. The high ownership of land and the relatively low rents for tenancy are the results of a series of land reforms, or Land Acts dating from 1957, which attempted to limit and distribute the amount of agricultural land in individual possession, and to limit the rent that could be charged to tenants.^[13] Furthermore, attempts were made to protect tenants against manipulation and eviction by landowners.

M. C. Regmi (1976, 208) summed up the effect of the series of Land Acts for Nepal:

With the imposition of ceilings on landholding, the existing concentration of landownership has been broken, both through the redistribution of lands in

excess of the ceilings and through voluntary transfers m anticipation of land reform. Big landowners no longer constitute a dominant economic class in the agricultural community. . . . The land-reform program has also conferred greater security of tenure on tenants and made it possible for them to appropriate the major portion of the produce. . . . Their rights are clearly defined by law and are actually being enforced by courts in their favour. Nevertheless, the land reform program has had little impact on the [traditional] agrarian structure.

The land reforms with their resulting marked improvement in the economic and social position of the farmers in Bhaktapur has had an unintended effect. To the degree that the traditional landowning classes, the Brahmans and merchants, lost their lands and land revenues and the farmers gained them, the newly wealthy farmers have come to be the supporters and clients of much of the traditional religious system as well as important employers of Brahmans. Less educated and less open to modernization than the higher classes, this transition has helped to slow down change and to support and conserve the old system.

As we have noted, the agricultural fields are in active use during most of the year. However, one (and only one) part of the year's agricultural activity is fundamental for Bhaktapur's symbolic life. This is the rice growing cycle (see fig. 2), which is what we will mean in our references to the "agricultural cycle" in this volume. It is the reference and source of much of the meaning of the segment of the annual festival cycle that we treat as the "Devi cycle," and for much of the meaning of the "dangerous goddesses." Ulrike Müller (1981, 57f.) summarized the sequence briefly for the town of Thimi in Bhaktapur's hinterland in a description that will serve exactly for Bhaktapur itself:

According to the variety of rice and the locality, the farmers begin with the digging of the fields at the start of the rainy season (June). This work is done by the men with a short-handled hoe (kodali [Nepali], or ku [Newari]). . . . Whilst the fields are still being dug and whilst the women are breaking up the clods with a long-handled, wooden hammer and carefully leveling the ground, rice is already being raised in seedbeds. Two or three weeks after being sown, the rice plants are [re]planted [from the seed bed] out in the main field. . . . By the fifteenth day of the Month Sravan (the end of July) all the rice plants would be replanted. [The rains are now expected and the fields will be watered directly by the rains and by means of controlled irrigation from water catchments on the hillsides.] After the water has been drained from the fields at the end of September (or even earlier in the case of some varieties), the main harvest takes place m October and November. The rice is cut with a sickle and threshed directly in the fields. . . . The grains of

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Figure 2.
Jyapu women planting rice paddy plants.

rice are brought home, whilst the straw remains in the fields to dry. . . . After the winnowing [which takes place m the farmers' quarters within the city] the grains of rice are dried for a few days in the sun if the weather is good. During this time, streets and squares, yards and roof-terraces are full of rice, which is spread out on straw mats and turned over several times. . . . After drying, part of the rice is taken to one of the [town's water-driven] rice mills and there the husk is removed. The largest part of the harvest however, is stored with the husk still on [in special granaries in the farmer's houses].