Abstract
Estimation of selection intensity is useful to understand the impact of natural selection on the fertility and mortality rates in the human population. Both fertility and mortality act as the major forces to determine the fitness of a particular population. The selection potential based on differential fertility and mortality has been computed among the Sonowal Kachari women of Dibrugarh district, Assam. The data is compared with other population groups inhabiting diverse bio-cultural environments from Northeast India to study the similarities and differences if any. The women aged 40 years and above, who have at least one surviving child and their husbands alive are only taken into consideration for the study. Data was collected with the help of the fertility and mortality survey schedule and the intensity of natural selection was analyzed using standardized formulae. The Sonowal Kacharis is one of the numerically dominant plains scheduled tribes of Assam. They belong to the Tibeto-Burman linguistic family. The comparatively higher contribution of differential fertility is found to operate amongst them. However, the ‘I’ value is found to incline more towards the lower level compared to the range displayed by the Northeast Indian populations.
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