Abstract
In this chapter, I analyse closely the socio-economic transformation of two villages with different ecologies and histories. The villages are located about 500 km apart from each other on the same longitude, with one village in the north and the other in the south. I have been doing research in these villages since 1986. My analysis is based on the individual household surveys that I did through interviews in Burmese language while living in the villages. At first, using various academic and local materials, and documents of the colonial government offices, I discuss the history of the villages, which may date back to as far as the 11th century. This discussion includes the climate, the topography, and the changes in population and ethnic composition over a century. Then, based on the data from my household surveys conducted in 1987, 1994, and 2013, I describe in detail the changes over 26 years in the villages. These changes include occupational structure, land tenure, farming methods, agricultural productivity, price structure, composition of the non-agricultural sector, and everyday livelihoods. In addition, I share the results from my participant observation research for the period 2013–2019, to describe the changes in the social economy of the village, and to clarify the reality of de-agrarianisation.
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Notes
- 1.
At that time, the total number of households in the village was 138, and I visited all of them, but I could not survey two households. However, I knew that their occupations were daily labourers in agriculture, so these two households are included in the tables and texts dealing with their occupations.
- 2.
The third village survey was conducted in January 2014, but all data such as population, number of households, occupation, and farmland area are those of 2013.
- 3.
For more on who U Chit Myaing was and what his life was like, see Takahashi (2018: 97–100).
- 4.
Since the occupations and farmland holdings of these missing 24 households were known, their occupations were added to the tables and texts dealing with the occupations of households in Thindaunggyi village in 1987.
- 5.
The term “taik” refers to houses made mainly of bricks, plaster, stone or concrete. It is distinguished from houses made of wood or bamboo. Even if only the roof is made of tin, it is called “taik”. Since its cost of construction was much higher than that of wood or bamboo houses, it has been regarded as a symbol of wealth in Myanmar villages.
- 6.
The third survey was conducted from late July to late August 2013 in Thindaunggyi Village and from early January to late January 2014 in Zeepinwea Village . Since all the data for both villages are from 2013, I will refer to the survey records for both villages as “as of 2013”. The surveys were only five months apart, and there were no major political or economic changes during this period. They are also in the same financial year in Myanmar.
- 7.
If you look up lujî (elder or doyen) in a Burmese dictionary, you will find that it means not only “elder” but also “community leader”, “important person”, and “respected person”.
- 8.
However, it seems that the Mon people had been engaged in irrigated agriculture here before the Burmese (Bamars) descended to Kyaukse (Luce, 1959b: 81).
- 9.
The Myanmar word “phayâ” is often translated as “pagoda,” but the two are not synonymous. Pagoda, in a narrow sense, refers to a stupa, and in a broader sense, to a Buddhist temple complex in East and Southeast Asia (Encyclopaedia Britannica online). In the case of the famous Shwedagon Paya in Yangon , the object of worship is the pagoda (or, more precisely, the zedi), so it is acceptable to say Shwedagon Pagoda. However, since the object of worship at the Mahamuni Paya in Mandalay and the Shwetheindaw Paya in Thindaunggyi village is a Buddha image, we must hesitate to translate them as pagodas.
Usually, a collection of religious buildings centring on a pagoda or a Buddha image is called a paya. If such a commentary is added, it may be translated as a pagoda. However, a paya is not a temple or monastery in any sense of the word. This is because there are no monks living in a paya, and the management and administration of the paya is done entirely by lay believers, without the involvement of monks. Monks often act as advisors in paya management. Sometimes, a paya is built within a monastery .
- 10.
In the 1911 census report, it is stated that there were 52 Muslims (listed as Mahomedans) and 4 Hindus in Thindaung Village Tract, but both populations were zero in 1921. At the same time, the population of Muslims and Hindus in the neighbouring Indain Village Tract was zero in 1911, but 68 Muslims and 28 Hindus were noted in 1921. It seems that in the 1911 census report, the number of Muslims and Hindus who should be listed in Indain Village Tract was shifted downwards to Thindaung Village Tract, because Muslims still live in Indain Village Tract now.
- 11.
In Myanmar, there is a similar kind of resident’s card called eindaundhâzù sayîn. It means “household members list”. The village tract mayor is supposed to manage it.
- 12.
For the 56 sample households surveyed in 2013, the household occupations back in 1987 were: 33 farmers, 8 sayinngas, 5 kyabans, 4 civil servants, 1 side-car driver, 1 bus conductor (spare), 1 peddler, 1 vegetable gardener, 1 canteen waiter and 1 unemployed.
- 13.
For the 54 sample households surveyed in 2013, the household occupations back in 1987 were: own farming (farmer) 33, agricultural hired labour 10, plasterer 7, a carpenter, a clerk, a civil servant, and a bicycle repairer.
- 14.
A chewing delicacy called kônya in Myanmar. A thin slice of dried betel nut is wrapped around a betel leaf coated with lime dissolved in water, which is then placed in the mouth and chewed.
- 15.
Myanmar national dish of noodles made from fermented rice flour and served in a broth made from catfish and other fish.
- 16.
For the non-farm households that do not own farmland, I selected 23 households based on the same criteria and interviewed them individually. In other words, the total number of sampled households is 56.
- 17.
Farmers do not distinguish between inheritance after an ancestor’s death and gift before an ancestor’s death, always referring to the transfer of farmland cultivation rights to children or grandchildren as “inheritance”. When farmers do refer to a “gift”, they mean a free transfer of rights to relatives or acquaintances who are more than three degrees of kinship apart (Takahashi, 1992: 116; 2018: 180–185).
- 18.
For the non-farm households, I randomly selected a quarter of the 56 households that remained in the village between 1987, 1994, and 2013. I also conducted individual interview surveys with two households that could not be surveyed in 1987 but were surveyed in 1994, with three households that split up (oekhwe) and became independent households between 1987 and 1994, and with two households that moved into the village after 1995. Thus, a total of 54 households were surveyed in 2013, including 33 households that were farm households in 1987.
- 19.
The former mayor of Thindaunggyi Village Tract sold 4 acres of paddy for 1.5 million kyats in 1995 to pay off debts incurred by his eldest son through land speculation and sold 2 acres of paddy for 2.5 million kyats in 2006 to pay off his second son’s debts after his second son lost a lot of money in paddy trading. Furthermore, his third son was in the business of selling a private wealth lottery called khye (chê), and when its winnings were so large that he could no longer pay, the former mayor sold an acre of paddy field for 18.5 million kyats in 2012 to pay for this. These paddy fields were adjacent to each other, so we can imagine how the land price skyrocketed between 1995 and 2012. The buyers were not villagers, but merchants from Kyaukse and Mandalay. Incidentally, the daily wage of a day labourer in the village in 2012 was 4000 kyats, and the monthly salary of a new civil servant just after graduation from university was 100,000 kyats.
The former mayor had sold all of his farmland to help his sons, but he said that he was just happy to have in this way “inherited” the farmland to them in his lifetime before he died.
- 20.
Bullocks over four years old, as well as male and female buffaloes over three years old, were used. They are collectively called draught cattle .
- 21.
In Burmese, it is called le’tûnhtunze’, that is, “hand-operated tractor”.
- 22.
In my 1987 survey, Zeepinwea interviews covered agricultural activities done from April 1986 to March 1987; in the 1994 survey, interviews covered agriculture done from April 1993 to March 1994; and in the 2014 survey, interviews covered agriculture from January 2013 to December 2013. For Thindaunggyi Village , the same was done in 1987 and 1994, while the 2013 survey covered agricultural activities from April 2012 to March 2013.
- 23.
One basket (tîn in Burmese) is a unit of volume in Myanmar and is equal to 9 English gallons (about 40.9 litres). During the colonial period, paddy and rice were measured in this volume, but after the start of the paddy procurement during the socialist period, one basket (one tîn) was instead defined as 20.8 kg of paddy with a moisture content of 15%. In the case of green gram, one basket is 32.7 kg.
- 24.
For the agricultural calendar of Thindaunggyi Village , see Takahashi (2000: 78). For the irrigation system and management in the village, see Takahashi (1993: 51–62).
- 25.
Ayeyarmin is a gamma-irradiated mutant of machando, imported from Malaysia in 1977. Not an IR strain but classified as a high-yielding variety . It is especially popular in Kyaukse District.
- 26.
In Myanmar, potassium chloride, potassium nitrate and potassium sulphate are used as potash fertilisers .
- 27.
Until the demonetisation in September 1987, I myself lived in Yangon by exchanging one US dollar at the official rate of about 6 kyats.
- 28.
- 29.
As for how funds and labour were raised to build this road, see Takahashi (2018: 68–69).
- 30.
Kuramoto states that “Myanmar Buddhism can be expected to have a fixed and stable relationship with village collectives ” (Kuramoto, 2014: 127), but from the above discussion it can be said that such an expectation is not necessarily possible. In the first place, villages in Myanmar are not even “village collectives”. This will be discussed later.
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Takahashi, A. (2023). A Socio-economic History of Two Villages. In: Regime Changes and Socio-economic History of Rural Myanmar, 1986-2019. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3272-6_4
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