Agricultural Employment, Production and Income of the Nagas: A Case of Nagaland State
Marchang Reimeingam
Morung Express, Nagaland, 9th May 2009
The economy
of Nagaland, a hilly state with a geographical area of 16,579 sq. km., is
basically agrarian where employment is predominated by traditional agriculture
sector. In such situation a large section of workers are engage in it, farm
inputs are crude and traditional, productivity is low, subsistence products are
produced, marketable surplus are insignificant, etc. However, with an increase
in demand of various agricultural products and the shortest of its supply
resulted to an automatically increase in the market price of the products. In
the process a modern farm inputs such as tractors, high yielding seeds,
fertilizers, etc are adopted as a result farm productivity and production are
raised leading to an increase in agricultural income of the state.
According
to the Forest Survey of India in 1999 as large as 85.43 percent of the state’s geographical
area is covered by forest. The total cropped area for all crops was only 260,000 hectares in 1998. Of
this a larger share of area is under jhumming
cultivation. According to the census of India the population size of the state is
close to 2 million in 2001. It is growing at an alarming rate of 4.98 percent
per annum during 1991-2001 affecting the structure of employment and nature of
unemployment that is contributed by both the natural growth and influx of
migrants. This resulted to a sharp increase in the density of population from
73 persons per sq. km. in 1991 to 120 in 2001. Due to the growing population
the density of agricultural workers (ratio between agricultural workers and
geographical areas or food grain areas, based on Population
and Agricultural Censuses) has also considerably increase. (Here area, production and
yield refer for total food grains.) Agricultural density (ratio between
agricultural workers and geographical areas) has increased from 23 agricultural
workers per sq. km. in 1991 to 35 in 2001. Similarly, agricultural density (ratio
between agricultural workers and food grain areas) has increased from 2.26 to
2.75 agricultural workers per hectares during the same period. Meanwhile, it is
also noteworthy that agriculture practices are mostly jhumming. The increase in agricultural density is because of the
increased in population where excess supply of labour are pressed onto the
non-extendable agricultural land due to an unavailability of employment in
non-agricultural sector. The increase of agricultural density means a decline
of per capita availability of land or decline of the size of land holdings
which reflects to underemployment particularly among those small or medium land
operators.
Majority of the workers are primarily engaged in
agriculture sector. Of the total workers (main and marginal) as
large as 68.38 percent were engaged as agricultural
workers (cultivators plus agricultural labourers)
in 2001 which has declined from 74.27 percent in 1991. The decline is
contributed by an increase in agricultural density which forces some previous
agricultural workers to work in other sectors. The growing labour force can
further unable to absorb in agriculture sector so they had to seek or take jobs
in other sector as a result the share of agriculture workers has declined. It must
also be true that there exist a wide spread disguised unemployment as a result
of high agricultural density. The declined is, thus, because of the implication
of the principle of “law of diminishing returns” that more and more people when
pressed to work on a given piece of land, their marginal (and average)
productivity declines. Nevertheless, in line of Mellor’s definition of
traditional agriculture of labour intensive, the existing large share of agricultural
workers indicates a traditional character.
The
income derived from the agriculture sector is disproportionate when compared to
the magnitude of employment in this sector. This is most likely due to the low
per capita agricultural production which is resulted by the high agricultural
density associated with low productivity. Low productivity is a result of
non-adoption of improved/high yielding inputs, dependence on monsoon for
irrigation, non-utilisation of bio-chemical inputs, showed crops with long
gestation period, etc. Moreover, the lack of technical-know-how for improving
agricultural productivity plays a significant role for low production. The contribution of income (Net State Domestic
Production based on data provided by planning commission) from agriculture was 18.53
percent in 1991 which has considerably increased to 30.31 percent in 2001. As a
result the per capita income of agricultural workers (ratio
between Agricultural Income and Agricultural Workers) has also
considerably increased from merely Rs. 1,151 in 1991 to Rs. 11,661 in 2001.
This increase is due to the general rising price level (Note that NSDP for 1991
is at 1980-81 price and for 2001 is at 1993-94 price). The low level of income
contribution by agriculture implies a continuation of practice of traditional
method of cultivation with insignificant use of modern farm inputs resulting to
a slow progress in production. While, agricultural productivity (yield) has
increased thereby raising production over the years. This can be explained by a
higher decadal growth of production (40.32 percent during 1991 to 2001) than
the growth of agricultural land/area (24.12 percent). The growth of production
is lower than the growth of population (64.53 percent) thereby reducing the per
capita food grain production and its growth (-14.71) during 1991 to 2001. The per capita food grain production (ratio between food grain
production and population based on data from Area and Production of Principal Crops in India and Population Census) has declined from 163 to
139 kg per person during 1991 to 2001. In order to raise per capita production
various measures such as reducing population growth and utilisation
of improved techniques of farm inputs and dissemination of technical-know-how
and market information need to be undertaken.
In
short, the share of agricultural workers has declined due to the growing
agricultural density; however, majority of the workers continue to engage in
agriculture practicing traditional cultivation. The corresponding share of
agriculture income has increased as a result of gradual growth in production
and rise in the price of agricultural products.
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For
citation: Marchang Reimeingam, Agricultural Employment,
Production and Income of the Nagas: A Case of Nagaland State, Morung Express, Nagaland, 9th
May 2009.
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