Apriori to agricultural problems emerged through participatory rural appraisal in temperate zone of the Himalayas

Abstract

The participatory rural appraisals were exercised during 2014 in temperate Himalayas in eight gram panchayats of Sangrah block of district Sirmour of Himachal Pradesh. The purpose was to unravel the problems being faced by the farmers, prioritise them and devise apriori based solutions for the upliftment of the peasants. The project area had 22 villages spread over 5611.09 ha. Out of which, 701.02 ha was the cultivable area in the possession of 12906 cultivators. The area was rugged, had steep topography and was stratified into ladder type fields. The matrix analysis extrapolated the prime problem of monkey and wild animals menace. Other problems ranking in the descending order were: erratic irrigation and drinking water supply, lack of awareness about new techniques, ginger rot, poor connectivity by road and communication, migration of youth from villages to cities, unavailability of agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizers etc., soil erosion, hindrance due to local politics, erratic electricity supply, abandoned agriculture due to public distribution system, lacking minimum support price and crop insurance of each crop, unconsolidated land, lacking higher education facility, labour scarcity due to MGNREGA and migration, defunct apple cultivars, frequent blockage and breakage of irrigation kuhals (channels) and invasion of obnoxious weeds. The insight solutions and the unleashed problems lies in farming bi-pronged strategy which must concentrate on i) convergence of schemes, and ii) apriori based approaches for the upliftment of rural community of the temperate Himalayas. The outcome of the present study suggested seven proposals for improving income resources of hilly peasants.