Caste, class, and power; changing patterns of stratification in a Tanjore village by Béteille André. cn

Author:Béteille, André. cn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Caste
Publisher: Berkeley, University of California Press
Published: 1965-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

122 ECONOMIC ORGANISATION

acres. Further, a mirasdar is himself allowed to bring under personal cultivation wet land up to a maximum of 6% acres, even though this may lead to displacement.

Tenants themselves do not constitute a single homogeneous class. On the one hand are the persons who secure leases on a more or less permanent basis on several acres of land, some of which they sublet while having the rest cultivated by hired labourers. On the other are the small tenants without means or power to vindicate their rights of security, having to seek from year to year an acre or two of land from some benevolent mirasdar. A person may have to do many favours to a mirasdar in order to secure from him a few acres of land on lease. Once having secured the lease, such a person is not always in a position to make use of the legal provisions to hold fast to it for good.

An important difference exists between tenants who take their lease directly from the landlord and those who are lessees of people who are tenants themselves. The latter are, naturally, able to bargain for a higher share from those to whom they lease the land than the tenant normally gives to a landowner. The difference is retained by the tenant at first hand whose role is, thus, that of an intermediary. Subletting, however, is not a very common phenomenon in the case of paddy cultivation. What is more common is for the tenant to have his land cultivated by hired labourers whose work he supervises.

Subletting is fairly common in the cultivation of bananas and betel vines. This is, to some extent, related to the difference in techniques of production between the cultivation of paddy and the cultivation of bananas and betel vines. In the case of bananas, a plot of paduhai belonging to A is often taken on lease by B, payment being normally made in cash; B cultivates the garden, and when the first crop is ready he may lease it for one year or so to C, also for cash, the rate being normally Rs. 5OP per plant.

It is quite common for banana orchards (as opposed to the paduhai on which they are prepared) to be taken on lease by wholesale merchants from outside the village. Many of the orchards in Sripuram are taken on lease by a dealer from Ariyalur, a marketing centre in Trichy district. There are others from Thiruvaiyar who also take leases on gardens located in

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