Does the policy of giving legal recognition to shifting cultivation as a form of agro forestry benefit the farming community? Examine (200 Words)
Refer - Business Standard
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 5 years
KEY POINTS
· The government is reported to be formulating a new policy that would lend legal recognition to shifting cultivation as a form of agroforestry to enable nomadic farmers get bank credit and agriculture-related subsidies.
· While the objective of this move is good, as it is unfair to deny government sops to those engaged in this age-old farm practice, its consequences are likely to be disastrous.
· In India, this pernicious practice is still in vogue on an estimated 1.73 million hectares, largely in the ecologically fragile hilly terrains in the Northeast. The other states where this primitive system of agriculture still persists in some pockets are Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.
· The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, which had mooted the idea of redefining jhumming land-use as agroforestry in a report in 2018, has its own logic for doing so. \It is based on the contention that shifting farming is essentially a method of putting land to two distinct uses alternately — agriculture, when it is under cultivation, and fallow forestry, when it is left untilled for revival of forest.
· A recent study conducted by the Mizoram University’s School of Earth Sciences bears this out. As many as 95 per cent of the respondents felt that jhumming was economically unviable.
· They wanted opportunities for higher income from farming and non-farm employment, education and medical facilities and other civic amenities apart from access to government schemes, which they are unduly denied in the absence of land titles (pattas) in their name.
· They also do not get many of the benefits provided under the Forest Rights Act. At present, they are treated neither as farmers nor as forest dwellers.
· A key conclusion of this study, which holds the clue to a viable policy to curb shifting agriculture, is that if financial assistance is made available for terracing the hill slopes where jhumming is practised now, the jhumias would gladly shift to permanent farming.
