Market Integration for Inclusive Growth

Abstract

The issue of market integration has been primarily examined in the disciplines of international business, development economics, finance strategy and managerial economics. Sociological views about market have been largely mute on integration issues. In this article, we examine the honey market in south India to make this conceptual contribution. Honey as a natural product, through interaction of complex botanical and zoological species, generates a unique market. It is ethnic communities, living closely with the nature, which depend on honey for their livelihood. Because of this reason, market integration is a challenging factor from the sociological point of view. Further, different policies by the state on forest products make market integration more difficult. In this study we empirically examine the honey market in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR) which is spread in three south Indian states. We examine how honey hunters overcome the barriers to market access. We examine the impact of different types of traders on the income for honey hunters. We present three value chains in the local communities, data that was collected in 2008 through fieldwork.