The Nonagricultural Economy
An inventory of the small stalls and shops that crowd the bazaar street gives some idea of the variety of the supplies and of the specialists who provide them, which are necessary for the material and symbolic life of Bhaktapur. There are (in no particular order) specialized shops or market areas selling: cloth for saris and clothes; ready-made clothes; Ayurvedic medicines; modern medicines; cigarettes, tobacco, and smoking supplies; rice and other grains; mustard oil, kerosene, and other fuel oils; metal cooking pots; curds; water buffalo meat; curios for the tourist trade; books; gold and silver ornaments and small religious figures in gold and silver; wood for construction; tools and nails; house paint; hair decorations and arm bangles; caps; sweetcakes; red peppers; electric goods; fruit; betel nuts; sewing thread; fertilizer; vegetables; salt; metal sheetings for roofing; woolen blankets; religious drawings and pigments for use in rituals; brass and copper pots of various kinds; brass religious images; animal feed; goats; chickens; locally made furniture; clay pots. And there are also stalls for serving tea and soft drinks, stalls for serving alcoholic beverages, stalls for serving cooked food. The shops and stalls are owned and run by members of a socioeconomic class, the sahu or shopkeepers.[14] Most of these are from the high-ranking Chathar and Pa(n)cthar groups of thar s (see chap. 5)—collectively referred to as "Shresthas[*] " or "Sresthas[*] " in some writings on the Newars—but some come from lower ranks of the traditional status system.
Besides the craftsmen, bakers, butchers, collectors and grinders of herbal medicines, spinners and weavers, blacksmiths, metal image casters, and the like who provide the goods for the shops, there are the city craftsmen—masons, carpenters, wood carvers, stone carvers, and so forth who are involved in construction and repair in the city. Finally, there are all kinds of specialized performers and providers of services—musicians of various types, ritual "dancers," barbers, medical special-
ists of various types, various kinds of priests and ritual specialists, midwives, cutters of umbilical cords, astrologers, tailors, fishermen, sweepers, and many more.
In contrast to the limited sample of specialists found in South Asian villages, Bhaktapur has a full panoply. They are, for the most part—as we shall see in following chapters—organized in the city's hierarchical system, and made use of for the symbolic life of the city.[15]
The 1971 census reported for Bhaktapur that 65.8 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture, 8.5 percent in commerce (shops and trade), and 8.2 percent in manufacturing, primarily crafts. The census also listed a small number of people engaged in electrical, gas, and water services (0.1 percent, some 20 people), in construction (0.8 percent, some 115 people, mostly house builders and masons), in transport and communication (1.1 percent, 153 people, including the mail service, an elementary telephone service, and truck drivers), and in finance and business (0.4 percent, some 53 people working mostly at a local branch of the Nepalese bank). The census also enumerated some 2,197 people, 15.1 percent of the economically active population, engaged in "personal and community services."[16] Many of these are the barbers, washermen, healers of various sorts, and so forth, who provide traditional services, often for patron families. Some of these providers of personal and community services work for the City Panchayat as sweepers and in repair and maintenance. Some work in the Bhaktapur administrative offices, some are teachers in Bhaktapur schools, and some, finally, of this group commute on buses, the electrified trolley (which was inaugurated in the early 1970s to connect Bhaktapur and Kathmandu), or occasionally by automobile or motorcycle to Kathmandu to work in one of the many offices of the Central Government's bureaucracy.
In short, the economy of Bhaktapur was at the time of this study concerned mostly with the production and distribution of goods and services for itself, most goods were produced and distributed within the city or its near environs,[17] few people were involved in administrative or bureaucratic jobs within the city itself, and much of the household income was "in kind" rather than in cash.[18]
Bhaktapur also had in comparison with many other modernized cities and towns in Nepal less differentiation of income. Compared to Kathmandu and Patan there is a "low level of income even for the rich people in Bhaktapur" (Acharya and Ansari 1980, 113). This is in part
because of the importance of agricultural wealth in Bhaktapur, and the extensive ownership of land by the farmers themselves.