Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

logged areas. Old working women also testified that they used to walk long distances and
go for agricultural work in Cherur, Vengara, Ponmundam, Pariyapuram and other places
outside the field area. Tenants holding puncha lands were also in a similar condition as
the lands remained water-logged for the rest of the season. This meant that those settled
in parambas had to make their livelihood with the yield from the paramba, which
remained a safe option, although the income may not have been substantial.
The traders did a little better than the cultivators. The old land routes and the river route
had not disappeared, and the appearance of the railroad, enabled them to travel longer
distances. Hence the merchants who operated from the angadis and the middlemen-
procurers who moved from kadavu to kadavu or from athani to athani could earn a decent
livelihood. But as we have seen earlier, that depended on the market for the agricultural
products in the area, and the nature of competition. Malabar fiber could never compete
with its counterpart from Tiruvitankur as an export commodity, and therefore, its capacity
to find markets was limited, which mean that the coir producers, and merchants in the
area, could not prosper beyond a certain level. This was the same with other commodities
also. Timber and hay appear to have made some progress as timber was brought to kallai
and hay to moorad in calicut, and we find the the emergence of powerful timber
merchants such as Patinjarepeetikakkal Rayinhaji and his son Moidu Haji, who was one
of the first to buy a motor car in the area.
With the growth of the rail road and the market centers induced by the impact of
capitalism, a new type of merchant emerged who began to replace the peddler, the
middleman and the trader in the angadi. They were people who gave up the ‘multi-
purpose trading’ of the earlier generation and invested in commodities that had the
highest exchange value in the given context. Rayin haji and Moidu haji were examples of
the new types of merchants. Similarly there were people who dealt in areca, betel, sugar,
oil, clothes, and other necessary commodities, which they procured from different major