Semi Primitive Economy Of An Indian Village

This is the first published full-dress study on the production structure and consumption pattern of a hilly tribal village in North-east India. Taken up a University Project by the Department of Economics of the North-Eastern Hill University at Aizawl Campus with 1985 as reference period. It is based on a respectable random sample of 74 families of Lungdal village with Schedules filled in by Faculty Members who had intimate knowledge of the village and could easily reach it thus leading in many features of a participation study. The findings of the survey are rather comprehensive, but the most stirring of these is that with a contribution of only 22 per cent of aggregate sample household incomes, jhum cultivation is neither a way of life in the village nor mainstay for the people. Farmers showed a clear tendency towards settled farming and horticulture and plantation, especially coffee. Overall savings potential of families was low but with trading and 18 per cent of incomes a large part of which could not be converted into assets. This, in fact, was found to be most important desideratum of the village. About 40 percent of the population was found to be below poverty line in desperate need of rehabilitation on some kind of peasant of cooperative plantation as suggested by the terrian, the rock formation and soil conditions. The monograph aims at partly closing the data gap to enable informed decision-making for the mammoth task of development management of the non-viable semi-primitive economies in the hilly tracts of North-East India.