Our preliminary discussion of changing trends in land ownership in Chapter VI, which dealt in terms of groups not individuals, showed that during this century different processes had been at work in Hausaland and the Anekal villages. Whereas in the Anekal villages the richer castes had not gained land at the expense of the Harijans (who had had hardly any land to lose), and may indeed have lost some to newcomers, in Hausaland the active working of the market had increasingly tended to concentrate land in the ownership of richer farmers, who had bought it from poorer men.

The recent stultification of the land market in both regions has scarcely affected the poor. In Hausaland they had already disposed of nearly all they possessed and have now become wary of selling the remainder; in the Anekal villages they usually manage to retain the little that they own unless forced into mortgaging it. Even so, the incidence of effective landlessness is bound to increase, if only because of the impossibility of dividing small holdings between several sons on death. As for the richer households as a group, there is no longer any appreciable tendency for them to gain land and, failing a large-scale exodus, average holdings are bound to diminish more rapidly. Only by diversifying and intensifying their various activities can members of this group hope to maintain their living standards.