page_title: Chinawal
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Chinawal / Economy
caption_attribution_description: Banana farm, Chinawal village, Maharashtra, India
context_page_description: Chinawal is a village in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state, India. It is situated at the foothills of the Satpura range in a generally hot and dry climate. The densely populated village is surrounded by the flat land and nutrient-rich black soil.
  The flora and fauna of Chinawal have been impacted by the human habitation and cultivation of the land, but non-human life like neem trees, tree squirrels and graculas can still be found in and around the village. Using modern methods of the agriculture and agronomic practices, villagers of the Chinawal village have achieved a high growth rate of agriculture produce especially of bananas which is noted by the Government of Maharashtra and various other institutions.
  Chinawal is also known for its educational facilities. It has Marathi, Urdu and English medium schools which offer education from the kindergarten up to higher secondary school, and which is facilitated by the students' accommodations and school buses.
  The 'vangyache bharit' loving villagers also favor urad dal, shev bhaji, puran poli and kheer in their dishes.
context_section_description: The occupation of most villagers is agriculture. Out of 4311 working villagers, 3187 are involved in agriculture-related work and 1124 are involved in other work. More than 60% of the money circulation in the village depends upon agricultural produce.
  Around 1890, a farmer at the Waghoda (Waghode) village, which is 3 km south of Chinawal, found a Roman coin while ploughing his field. The coin was of a rare variety and was in very fine condition. It belonged to the period of Roman emperor Septimius Severus (193 A.D.-211 A.D.). A October 1904 paper published in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society discussed that the Roman Empire had a cotton trade with the cotton-growing eastern districts of the Dekhan region of India, which Waghoda and Chinawal villages are parts of.
  Chinawal village and Jalgaon district are known for banana production, but this wasn't always the case. The 16th century Ain-i-Akbari written by Abul Fazl discusses the economy of the Khandesh region in detail, but does not mention banana cultivation It is not known with certainty when banana cultivation started in the Jalgaon district, but the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency (Vol II, Book IV, Part II, Page 176) written in 1880 made the following observation regarding banana cultivation in the Khandesh:
   The Plantain, kel, Musa paradisiaca, is widely grown wherever water is plentiful and easily raised. There are two tolerably distinct kinds, the ray kel and the common kel. The ray kel is like the Chinese banana. The fruit, though thinner skinned and somewhat better flavoured than the common plantain, is less suitable for cooking, and being a light cropper and wanting much water, is but sparingly cultivated. The common three-cornered plantain, the taperi of Gujarat, the monde of Madras, and the gulur bale of Mysor, is easily grown and yields freely.
   During the British period, Chinawal village was known for handloom weaving and quality cloth production, not for banana production. Page 229 of the British gazette made the following observation:
   The chief hand-woven cloth goods are [...] floor cloths, cotton sheets, stamped dirty-red coverlets, smaller sheets and cushions, from Nandurbar, Shahada, Varsi, Betavad, Sindkheda, Chopda, Jalgaon, Jamner, Faizpur, and Chinaval.
  The master weaver was used to supply yarn to handloom weavers in the Chinawal village and used to take ready clothes from the villagers to sell in weekly bazaars, shops, and fairs. The gazette made the following observation regarding the life of handloom weavers:
   They are paid on an average from 3d. to 9d. (2-6 annas) a day. Both men and women weave, keeping not more than thirty holidays in the year, and working, except for about an hour's rest at noon, from morning to night, so long as they have light to see.
  The gazette also noted that the textile machinery introduced by the Europeans in the Indian market had resulted in unequal competition and consequently villagers were losing their livelihood.
caption: Banana farm in Chinawal village
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