THE ECONOMIC ORDER

With agriculture as the main occupation of the people and the basis of wealth, the question of the ownership of land is of great importance. Bali presents the amazing spectacle of a land where the deeply rooted agrarian communalism of the people has continued to exist side by side with the feudalism of the noble landlords. We have seen that the true Balinese village is an independent economic and social unit, ruled by a council of villagers with voting power, equal rights for all, and ownership of land restricted by village regulations.

The lands are communally cultivated to maintain the village festivals, and even the ground on which the houses stand is village property that can be reclaimed if the tenant abuses his privileges. Since the land and its products belong to the ancestral gods, the idea of absolute property is not firmly rooted among the Balinese. In our household nobody objected when neighbours came and cut flowers and banana leaves without permission.

Alongside the Balinese commune is the contrasting influence of mediaeval princes who have tried, without success, to abolish the village organization and the religion that motivated it, t replace it by feudal rule with an official cult under their control. Passive disobedience at first, and Dutch supremacy later, lerf the princes in the position of impoverished nominal aristocrats. who, despite the fact that they represent the Government, are, excluded from the administrative management of the villages Through their co-operative societies, the bandjars and subaks, the Balinese have recaptured some of their village autonomy.

However, the communal system has suffered considerably in the feudal territories where the princes have held sway; the communal lands sometimes became part of the estate of the local prince, who gave grants of lands to his vassals in exchange for servitude, and gradually ownership of the land in these districts became more and more individualistic, developing a class of organized small landowners. Village ground cannot legally be disposed of, but sawas have been pawned when there was great need of ready cash.

Land has never become a commodity, how ever, and today the agriculturist is protected to a certain extent by the law forbidding the sale of agricultural lands to foreigners. perhaps one of the wisest laws passed by the Dutch Government.

Economic inequality is not as striking in Bali as elsewhere. Until recently almost everybody wore the same type of clothes. all went barefoot and lived in thatched houses. At first sight the all seemed happy and prosperous. The majority of the population has a roof, enough to eat, and some big silver dollars buried under the earthen floor of the sleeping-quarters. Yet there are some who are extremely poor while others are considered rich. There are people without lands or a house of their own, living a parasitic life of slavery, a remnant of feudalism, attached to the household of a master and eating whatever is given them.

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