Page 98 - Changing Living Spaces

Haruhisa Asada

The fourth factor is the economic policy of the Indian government. The
Food Corporation of India (FCI) regularly buys more rice and wheat pro-
duced in Punjab and Haryana than in Assam. In 2016, the FCI purchased
372,443.12 tonnes of rice from Assam, which is only about 7 percent of
Assam’s total rice production of 5,127,000 tonnes (Government of Assam
2017). In addition, the Indian Public Distribution System (PDS) discour-
ages local farmers from growing rice in their fields. The PDS distributes
rations, including rice produced in Punjab and Haryana, to ‘above pov-
erty line’ (APL), ‘below poverty line’ (BPL), and ‘Antyodaya Anna Yojana’
(‘poorest of the poor’, AAY) households at prices far below market levels.
Because government policies do not encourage local farmers in Assam to
engage in subsistence agriculture, Assamese residents have little incen-
tive to grow staple crops in their own fields.
These factors have combined to reduce the incentive for agriculture in
Assam, leading to changes in agricultural land use. Various impacts of
changes in agricultural land use are already being observed, including re-
duced expansion of rice acreage, changes in the rice field ecosystem, and
changes in rural landscapes. The following section discusses the result-
ing changes in land use in the context of Muktapur village. Both cultural
and economic factors influencing current land use patterns are discussed.
Conversion of Farmland to Other Land Uses

Much cultivated land has been converted to uses other than rice culti-
vation. In the 2018 Kharif season, 6.7 hectares of agricultural land in
Muktapur village were not cultivated and lay fallow due to lack of water
or labour, or because of decreased productivity, especially at higher eleva-
tions. Apart from the fallow land, the abandoned cultivated land is main-
ly used as forest land or fish ponds, depending on the size and distance
from the owners’ residences.
In Muktapur village, 63 out of 491 households converted part of their
cultivated land into forests. On average, 0.04 hectares per household were
converted in this way, representing about 11 percent of each household’s
cultivated land.
In addition to planting trees, villagers in Muktapur also worked to cre-
ate fish ponds on formerly cultivated land (figure 9). Of the 491 house-
holds in the village, 164 have converted some of their cultivated land into
fish ponds; thus, this approach is more widespread than converting cul-
tivated land into forest land. The average area of fish ponds is 0.08 ha,
which is about 20 percent of the total cultivated area per household. Fish

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