period, and this carried over into some rise in their social status as well. The most recent round of survey data suggest that by 2008-9 agriculture may have become somewhat less potent a driver of income growth and that this may be contributing to an erosion of the Murao’s economic status.

An examination of evolving caste relations based on scrutiny of the Muraos and Thakurs would suggest considerable caste dynamism in Palanpur, with the Muraos gradually coming to rival the Thakurs at the top of the village hierarchy. At the bottom end of the hierarchy, however, the situation of the Jatabs had long seemed frozen in place. Historically, the Jatabs were socially and economically the most deprived caste in Palanpur. They owned little land, lived in a cluster of shabby mud dwellings, and earned most of their income from casual labor and subsistence farming. Illiteracy among Jatabs had been near universal throughout the survey period, and up to 1993 few Jatabs had ever succeeded in obtaining regular employment outside the village. Indeed, Lanjouw and Stern (1998) indicate that in the period up to 1983/4, even after controlling for wealth position and education levels, Jatabs were unlikely to find regular employment in the non-farm sector. In these earlier survey rounds, there was little sign of growth in per-capita income for the Jatabs. So, in relative terms, their incomes were declining: in the 1957/8 and 1962/63 survey years the average per-capita income of Jatab households was about 70% of the village average. In the 1974/5 and 1983/4 survey years the corresponding proportion had declined to barely 50%. In terms of access to land the Jatabs also experienced little advancement. Even though Jatabs were as involved in cultivation as the Muraos and Muslims, unlike those two groups they did not succeed in increasing their land endowments. In fact, between 1983/84 and 1993 Jatabs lost 10 per cent of their land, mainly due to one household selling most of its land to repay mounting debts.

One of the key findings emerging from the 2008/9 survey data is that the circumstances of the Jatabs is showing significant improvement, both absolutely and relative to the rest of the village. This process is paralleled by a clearly discernable expansion of non-farm employment in the village economy. What is key is that Jatabs appear now to be enjoying greater access to nonfarm opportunities than in the past, and this is translating into rising per capita incomes and upward mobility. We provide some preliminary documentation of this trend further below.

# _Expansion of Non-Farm Employment_

In their account of Palanpur’s growing inter-connectedness with the wider economy of Uttar Pradesh, Lanjouw and Stern (1998) documented a process of expanding non-agricultural wage employment amongst villagers. In the period up to 1993, much of this took the form of regular or semi-regular employment outside the village (distinguished from “casual” daily wage employment by a modicum of employment security, and usually involving weekly or monthly, as opposed to daily, wage payments). Between 1957-8 and 1993 the number of villagers with regular or semi-regular employment outside of agriculture rose from 11 to 49.<sup>7</sup> Most of these jobs occurred outside the village, within commuting distance for Palanpur’s inhabitants. The range of activities gradually expanded over time, but one clear pattern was that employment opportunities tended to cluster around well-defined locations and socio-economic groups. Employers that accounted for a significant number of jobs include the railways, a cloth mill in

> 7 The number of outside jobs in 1993 was somewhat lower than in 1983-4 due to the closure of some local cloth mills.

13