Livelihood Pattern and Sustainability among the Scheduled Tribes in Kamrup District Assam

Abstract

The present study entitled Livelihood Pattern and Sustainability among the newlineScheduled Tribes in Kamrup District, Assam is carried out with the objective of getting an newlineinsight of the livelihoods practiced by the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and the level of newlinesustainability of these livelihoods in Kamrup district of Assam state. The study is divided newlineinto six chapters. It is mainly based on primary data. It is found from the study that a total newlineof 51 different livelihoods are practiced by the surveyed ST population of the study area newlinewhich is further grouped into three categories that are resource based livelihoods (60.85 %), newlineknowledge and skill based livelihoods (21.59 %) and distress driven livelihoods (17.56 %). newlineOut of the 51 livelihoods only 35 are found to be followed as primary income sources by newlinethe sampled population. As resources influence the pattern of livelihoods of the people, so newlinenatural asset map is prepared using GIS technology which revealed alluvial soil (54.75 %) newlineto be dominant in the study area followed by forest cover (28.18 %), surface natural water newlinebodies (11.93 %) and natural grassland (2.55 %). Three types of vulnerability context are newlinefound in the study area which are shocks such as sudden economic crisis arising out of newlinedeath or illness of the earning member, crop diseases, livestock diseases, unemployment newlineand Covid-19 pandemic; stresses or seasonality such as man-animal conflict, flood, low newlinecrop production and chronic diseases; and trends such as technological up gradation, newlinechanges in prices of goods and services and change in production level of crops. To newlineovercome all these vulnerability contexts, different livelihood strategies are found to be newlineadopted or adapted by the sampled population which are livelihood diversification (90.3 newline%), temporal migration (4.9 %), agricultural intensification (55.9 %), share cropping (land newlineborrower) (18.9 %), land mortgage (4.6 %), selling of assets (15 %) and dependence on newlinenatural resources (86 %). Moreover, varied positive or negative correlations between