Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/579

 RUBL LIFE OF OH OTN GP UB The villaer's ca see of the half of the the villagers wants, they seer town. standard is very do not seer in simple. require kachi as opposed to the One khi seer is nearly weight. The life o! To meet their few run to shops fre- quently. There is hardly a shop in a'villae. Very rarely one comes across the shop o! a tdi wh) keeps chhtu (powdered gwr (raw sugar). to a few annas. gram) some salt and a stone o! His total daily transactions amount Once or twice in a week there are ttf or fairs where people flock together for sale and purohase;the-hat begins at ten and is dissolved before sunset. Oustore reigns supreme in the villages and some- times it exercises its influence very tyrannically. For want of funds, a man cannot call in a doctor, but when any o! his relatives dies, he must spend a large sum; the dead body must be covered with a new piece o! cloth and after the expiration o! a certain period he must beg or borrow to give a feast to his relatives and kinsmen. Until he arrangas this feast, he will have to remain outside his caste. The trouble o! finding funds drowns his sense o! beremvsment. The majority of. the villagers are very poor. We cannot decide whether a people is poor, unless we determine on the one hand, the income, and on the other, the extent and the:.e]ements o! the cost of. living X have constructed budgets of some fity different villagers and .X find that the important items of expenditure of a Ohotanagpur villager are principally three: (i) food (if) clothing and (iii) shelter. Some 70 per cent or even 75 per cent of the totaJ income is invariably spent on food, which includes. rice substitute t**,.gond/i or ctu (powdered salt, 71 or its gram), (red pepper), vegetables (occasionally