Participation of Tribal Farm Women in Fruit Crops Production Practices in Arunachal Pradesh

Abstract

A study was conducted in 7 districts of Arunachal Pradesh, namely, Papumpare, Lower Subansiri, East Siang, West Siang, West Kameng, Namsai and Lohit. A total of 420 respondents were selected to determine the extent of participation of tribal farm women in diff erent fruit crop production activities along with the problems faced by them in diff erent fruit crops production activities. It was found that among all the activities of fruit crop production, maximum (56.67%) number of respondents had ‘independent participation’ in cleaning of fruit plant, 87.62 per cent of the respondents had ‘joint participation’ in selection of plot and 79.52 per cent of the respondents had ‘no participation’ in smudging. The study highlights the correlates of the extent of participation in fruit crop production with selected personal variables of the tribal farm women. The results revealed that the variable viz. family size (r=0.110*) exhibited a positive and signifi cant relationship with the extent of participation whereas the variables viz. age, educational qualifi cation, family type, organizational membership and landholding did not exhibit any signifi cant relationship with extent of participation. Findings revealed that in the case of infrastructural problems, improper transport facilities were ranked one (1.35), nutritional defi ciency among plants (0.95) stood fi rst for production problems, lack of Govt. subsidy (1.86) becomes fi rst barrier for economic problems, non-availability of scientifi c technology (1.12) ranks fi rst for technological problems, similarly, overloaded household work (1.68) in case of socioeconomic problems and health problems (0.66) came fi rst for others problems faced by women in fruit production.