Diarist 25 is a gentle, perhaps rather submissive, man, married but with no children - he and his wife at one time took a nephew into their home. He completed high school, his wife primary school. They live in his father's compound, but eat separately. He went to Malaysia in 1994 and came back three years later, and reports that the trip was 'moderately successful' financially.
He and his brothers have a disputed claim on a small piece of land of their own, but he also sharecrops-in land, including some of his own father's land. He grows paddy, bananas and vegetables and can sometimes be seen selling these products sitting on the side of the road at the Targaon market crossing. His wife does a casual cleaning job at the local government hospital, paid erratically.
In early 2019 the Market Committee decided to charge all retailers a fee in order to hire guards to keep them safe from a perceived increase in theft. Diarist 25 got the job of collecting those fees, but when the Covid lockdown came in the Spring of 2020 shops closed and the service was halted for two months.
Things have not gone well for him recently. His wife needed a gallbladder operation in mid 2023. He and his brothers got entangled in a legal dispute over the claimed land. It was resolved in their favour in early 2024 but continues to cost them legal fees and bribes. Just after that, he lost his fee-collecting job, because the shop-keepers decided, after a high-profile theft, that they didn't want the guard service. Now he is back to growing and selling. His wife's wage as a cleaner has been held up because of cuts to the budget for casual staff.
As chart 01 shows, they have many months when expenses exceed income. They do, however, consume some of their own farmed produce, and this helps them survive. In the chart, business costs consist mainly of farm inputs.
Note: we did not collect data from Diarist 25 between early 2017 and mid 2019 during a period of reduced funding
