Improved Livelihoods on Less Land

The chapter traces the changing economic history of two villages from their status as frontier settlements with abundant land in the 1950s, to poor farming areas ill-endowed with infrastructure, to more prosperous settlements benefitting from commercialized tomato cultivation and good road connections to the regional capital. The wealth is visible in the larger number of higher-quality houses which are being constructed. There are also changes in local perceptions of what wealth and poverty mean. Finally the chapter presents different sorts of strategies which capture the ways in which residents have responded to the opportunities and circumstances around them.