Gainers and Losers: A Note on Land and Occupational Mobility in a South Indian Village, 1977-85

This paper examines evidence on changes in the pattern of land-ownership and in household occupations based on a longitudinal study of a village in the relatively advanced agricultural region of Tamil Nadu, India. The question motivating the paper is whether the occurrence of mobility moderates the high levels of inequality observed in the region. The matrix approach is used to examine mobility. Matrices of occupations and land-holdings are constructed for the eighty-three panel households, spanning a period of eight years, to indicate the degree and direction of mobility. The investigation suggests that agricultural modernization within the existing structural framework has provided restricted opportunities for occupational change and has not mitigated the extreme polarization in the distribution of land.