ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on economic and social changes in Malegaon between 1920 and 1950, the middle period of commercialization. In terms of long-term economic mobility, then, the question is how the gains and losses balance out, since during the peak phase, some families are able to buy more land or intensify production so that the successor households may actually be better off than the original one. Upward mobility was also, of course, the result of new opportunities for employment and investment in the sugar economy. The sugar economy offered a variety of labor arrangements, depending partly on the skill and experience of the worker. Women and the youngest, weakest, and least skilled men looked for jobs as daily laborers and faced frequent periods of unemployment. The strongest men, with experience, joined contract labor teams providing specialized services to cane growers.
