Agricultural Development and Socio-Economic Profile of Farmers in Arunachal Pradesh: With Special Reference to Tawang District

Abstract

Arunachal Pradesh is an agrarian economy and it is the main source of earnings for people. In Arunachal Pradesh, the contribution of the agriculture sector to its GSDP is 44.78 percent. The present study is to analyze the trend and growth in production and productivity of food crops in Arunachal Pradesh. It also tried to examine the socio-economic profile of farmers in rural households. The study was based on both primary and secondary data. The secondary data were collected from NEDFI Data Bank and Statistical Abstracts of Arunachal Pradesh. The primary data were collected by conducting field surveys in Tawang District. The survey was based on a multi-stage sampling technique. In the first stage, the Tawang district was selected and in the second stage, Namazing and Kharsa villages of the Jang block were selected purposively. The sample size was 50 households. During the study, it was found that the overall production of food crops in the state was very low. The main issues of agriculture development in the state are limited arable land and low productivity. There has been a diversification of livelihood towards nonagricultural income sources. The socio-economic profile of farmers are found poor. People’s dependency on the public distribution system for food grains has substantially increased. It is a indication of inadequate production of food grains in the district. There is a need to focus on improving the productivity of major crops as the income of farmers is low.