The Consultation on “Results from Village Surveys in Tripura” began at 11 a. m. on March 18 at the conference room of the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Youth Hostel, Agartala.

The project “Livelihoods, Homestead Farming and Human Development in Tripura” was initiated by the Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore Centre.

The inaugural session was attended by Manik Sarkar, Chief Minister, Government of Tripura. About 80 persons — from Government, the All-India Kisan Sabha, the All India Agricultural Workers Union, and the All India Democratic Women’s Association and others — were present at the session.

V K Ramachandran introduced the Project on Agrarian Relations in India and the villages studied in Tripura. Khakchang in North Tripura district, Mainama in Dhalai district, and Muhuripur in South disrict were studied by the Foundation in 2005 as part of the fieldwork for the Tripura Human Development Report and again in May-June 2016.

M S Swaminathan addressed the meeting through a specially recorded video message. His speech was titled “The Agricultural Potential of Tripura.” Look out for a transcript on the Blog section of this website soon.

Ramachandran presented a detailed introduction to the highlights of the results of the surveys, and an outline of the findings on the growth of the productive forces in the countryside and the relations of production in the three villages. Each village was identified as a separate agro-ecological zone and its characteristics described and analysed. The three survey villages represent different agrarian regimes, that is, different types and scales of agriculture, farming practices, terrain (or topography), and production relations.

Madhura Swaminathan then gave an illuminating lecture titled “The Peace Dividend,” in which she identified significant gains in human development that were achievable because of the establishment of peace in rural Tripura. She illustrated her lecture with empirical data on employment, work participation, education and demography from a range of sources of secondary data and from data gatherd by the Foundation in 2005 and 2016 in the three villages.

In the afternoon session, Biplab Sarkar (his collaborators are Daya Mohan Tripura and Vijay Kumar) spoke on the agricultural and crop economies of the three villages, with detailed analyses of the economics of rice, rubber, and vegetable cultivation, and the specific characteristics of mixed cultivation in jhum (or slash and burn) cultivation in Khakchang.

Tapas Singh Modak spoke on the composition of household incomes in Tripura. He emphasised the multiplicity of sources of household incomes in the three villages, and the diversity as between the villages.

Pallavi Chavan’s research on banking in Tripura breaks new ground in that it is the most up to date account of rural banking in the State, and the only study to locate rural banking in Tripura in the context of banking policy in India as a whole and of banking in the North East. T Sivamurugan presented some results on household indebtedness from the village data.

The Consultation continues, so watch this space!