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NepalRural Society and Kinship
Nepal in the early 1990s was predominantly a
rural-agricultural
society, where more than 90 percent of the people lived in
rural
areas and depended on farming as a source of livelihood.
Even in
settlements designated as urban areas, the rural-urban
distinction
easily was blurred; approximately 50 percent of urbanites
outside
the three cities in the Kathmandu Valley were engaged in
farming
for their livelihood. Even in the Kathmandu Valley cities,
30 to 40
percent of city dwellers were agriculturalists. In this
sense, most
urban areas were economic extensions of rural areas, but
with an
urban manifestation and a commercial component. Farming
was the
dominant order of society and the mainstay of the economy,
a
situation that was unlikely to change, given the extremely
sluggish
pace of economic transformation.
The basic social unit in a village was the family, or
paribar, consisting of a patrilineally extended
household.
The extended family system should not, however, be
construed as a
necessarily harmonious form of village life. Many extended
families
broke apart as sons separated from parents and brothers
from each
other. At the time of separation, the family property was
equally
divided among the sons. If parents were alive, they each
received
a share. Family separation generally occurred in cases
where the
head of the household was less assertive and domineering,
when the
father died, or when all the sons married. Unmarried sons
normally
did not separate from their parents; if the parents were
deceased,
unmarried sons usually stayed with their older brothers.
Because
family separation always resulted in a division of family
landholdings, landholdings were extremely fragmented, both
geographically and socially. Sometimes, family separation
and
resulting land fragmentation turned into a bitter feud and
led to
legal disputes.
Beyond the immediate family, there existed a larger
kinship
network that occasionally involved sharing food. This
network also
was an important means of meeting farm labor needs,
especially
during the planting and harvesting seasons, when labor
shortages
were common.
Above the kinship network was the village, which
functioned as
a broader unit of social existence. Some villages were no
more than
hamlets made up of just a few houses; others were sizable
communities of several neighboring hamlets. In more
populous
villages, the caste groups contained occupational low
(untouchable)
caste groups, such as the Kami (ironsmiths who make
tools), the
Sarki (leathersmiths), and the Damai (tailors and
musicians), who
fulfilled the vital basic needs of the village as a fairly
selfcontained production unit.
Villagers occasionally pooled their resources and
labored
together to implement village-level projects, such as
building
irrigation ditches or channels, or facilities for drinking
water.
If a household could afford to hire farm labor, it usually
relied
on the mutual labor-sharing system called parma,
which
allowed villagers to exchange labor for labor at times of
need.
Although farming traditionally ranked among the most
desirable
occupations, villagers frequently encouraged some of their
children
to leave in search of civil service, army, and other
employment
opportunities. Individual migration was often the result
of a
family decision and an important economic strategy; it not
only
served as a safety valve for growing population pressures
but also
generated cash incomes, thereby averting any undue
economic crises
in the family. Well-to-do village families usually pushed
their
children to obtain civil service jobs as a means of
climbing the
bureaucratic ladder and of developing valuable connections
with the
elite political structure.
Farming was the most important source of livelihood in
rural
areas, but the scarcity of land placed severe constraints
on
agricultural development. Landholding was the most
important basis
for, or criterion of, socioeconomic stratification. The
1981
agricultural census data identifies five classes of
peasantry:
landless and nearly landless, people with no land or less
than half
a hectare; subsistence, those with half a hectare to one
hectare;
small, holders of one to three hectares; medium, people
with three
to five hectares; and large, farmers of more than five
hectares
(see
table 8, Appendix).
In terms of production relations, the first two classes
were
dependent on large landowners for survival. Small
landowners, on
the other hand, were relatively independent; they did not
have to
depend on the large landowning class for survival,
especially if
they were involved in circular migration as a source of
supplementary cash income. Nor did they regularly employ
members of
the first two classes. Landowners of medium-sized plots
were
independent of large landowners. Their engagement in wage
laboring
or tenancy farming was sporadic, if present at all. In
some cases,
they employed others during peak farming seasons. The
large
landowning class regularly employed farm workers and
benefited from
the existence of excess labor, which kept wages low. In
general,
the situation of landholders was exacerbated by the
archaic nature
of farming technology and the absence of other resources.
It was
not surprising that rural poverty was widespread.
Data as of September 1991
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