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XI. A Century of Rural Expansion in Assam, 1870-1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

J. F. Richards  and
J. Hagen
J. F. Richards
Affiliation:
Duke University
J. Hagen
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

The seven districts of present-day Assam state, comprising 7.8 million hectares (78,496 km2), lie in the valley of the Brahmaputra river in the extreme northeast of India. On the map they form an extended finger of riverine land pointing toward the mountain boundary. Assam has been a steadily developing frontier region since the middle decades of the nineteenth century. One arm of this development has been that of the plantation economy devoted to tea production in the highlands. British capital, British managers, and Indian coolie labor formed the essential elements in this growing export-oriented economy. From 1870 another settler-based frontier society emerged when peasant migrants from Bengal and ex-tea-laborers took up government-owned wastelands along the Brahmaputra and its tributaries to grow paddy rice. Together these two forces have transformed the face of the land and created a new society in Assam over the past century. The British colonial regime's policies generally favored the development and growth of both the estate and the smallholder sectors of Assam's economy. In this process the indigenous Assamese — whether peasant cultivators or tribal hill peoples — have faced immense pressures on their society and way of life. The purpose of this essay is to delineate the transformations in the land and the agricultural economy that accompanied this process in Assam.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 11 , Issue 1: India and Indonesia from the 1830s to 1914: The Heyday of Colonial Rule , March 1987 , pp. 193 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1987

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References

Notes

1 Griffiths, Percival, The History of the Indian Tea Industry (London 1967); and a more recent work,Google ScholarTinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery (London 1974)Google Scholar.

2 All data are from the Agricultural Statistics of India series.

3 Chaudhuri, Tushar K., Demographic Trends in Assam (Delhi 1982) 45, Table 23Google Scholar.

4 Ibidem, 39.

5 Ibidem, 45, Table 23.

6 Other groups include migrants from Nepal, perhaps 300,000 persons in 1971. Many Nepalis have become stock breeders and pastoralists for cattle and buffalo. (Ibidem, 44.)

7 Calculated from Government of India Census data. Population totals have been adjusted to conform to Assam's 1971 boundaries encompassing an area of 78,496 km2.

8 The numbers in this table are based on Hagen, James R., ‘Indian States of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, plus the Union Territories of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram’ in: Richards, John F. et al., Land-Use and Vegetation Changes in South and Asia, 1700-1980, A Preliminary Report 1.8 (Unpublished report, Durham 1985) 6–8. Data the Preliminary Report are derived from the Agricultural Statistics of India series, settlement reports, gazetteers, census reports, and other published materials. This research has been supported by Subcontract No. 19X-43361C of Duke University with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Environmental Division, Contract No. DE-AC05-840R21400 with the U.S. Department of EnergyGoogle Scholar.

9 Report of the Assam Agricultural Commission. Government of Assam, State Planning Board (1975) 63. Lack of investment and stagnant yields is one of the main issues addressed by the commission.

10 For a discussion of the effects of the jhumming cycle reduced from twenty or thirty years to five or six, see State of India's Environment, 44-45.

11 Richards, John F., Haynes, Edward S. and Hagen, James R., ‘Changes in the Land and Human Productivity in Northern India, 1870-1970’, Agricultural History 59, 4Google Scholar.

12 Calculated from Government of India Census data.

13 State of India's Environment, 44.

14 Ibidem.

15 This detailed description is taken from Hunter, W. W., A Statistical Account of Assam I (London 1879; repr. New Delhi 1975) 103–168, ‘A Statistical Account of Darrang District’Google Scholar.

16 Ibidem, 131.

17 Ibidem, 132.

18 Ibidem, 134.

19 Ibidem, 114.

20 Ibidem, 104. Hunter also comments at another point that ‘There is a great deal of culturable waste land in the district, but most of it now bears heavy grass jungle, reeds, or forest, very expensive to clear.’ (Ibidem, 146.)

21 Ibidem, 136.

22 Ibidem, 106.

23 Allen, B. C., Assam District Gazetteers, Darrang (Allahabad 1905) 140Google Scholar.

24 Allen's detailed gazetteer account of the district does no t mention any form of immigration from Bengal. The total Muslim population of the district, almost entirely native Assamese, was only one-twentieth of the inhabitants. (Ibidem, 100.)

25 Dutta, N. C., Assam District Gazetteers, Darrang (Gauhati 1978) 105Google Scholar.

26 Calculated from Government of India Census data. All arable figures, except that for 1870, come from the Agricultural Statistics of India series. The 1870 number is Hunter's estimate for 1874-75, Statistical Account I, 128. Since this source does not provide a current fallows measurement, we have estimated this figure by averaging the current fallows for five years, 1890-95. These figures are found in the official agricultural statistics for Darrang. Between 1890 and 1940 official current fallows areas given for all Assam districts were probably inflated. During these years the current fallows areas ‘include[d] generally all lands which are thrown out of cultivation, but remain in the occupation of leaseholders’. In following this formal rather than a working definition of short-term, or less than three years, fallows, officials in Assam seem to have consistently overstated the area for current fallows until World War II. Other sources used in making the estimates shown in the table include: Allen, Assam District Gazetteers; Dutta, Assam District Gazetteers; McSwiney, J., The Settlement Report for the Darrang District, 1905-1909 (Calcutta 1910);Google ScholarPakyntein, E. H., Darrang District Census Handbook, 1961 (Gauhati 1965);Google ScholarSaikia, A. K., Assam District Census Handbook: Darrang, Census, 1971, Series 3 (Gauhati 1973)Google Scholar.

27 Das, A. K., Assam's Agony: A Socio-Economic and Political Analysis (New Delhi 1982) 27Google Scholar.

28 Ibidem, 27-28.

29 All data are from the Agricultural Statistics of India series.

30 Data for 1900 and 1930 ar e from Agricultural Statistics of India and those for 1970 are from Dutta, , Assam District Gazetteers, 193. Darrang's trends in livestock population are representative of the state as a whole:Google Scholar

31 Allen, , Assam District Gazetteers, 132Google Scholar.

32 Statistical Handbook, 1971. Government of Assam, Department of Economics and Statistics (Shillongn.d.).

33 Dutta, , Assam District Gazetteers, 198–201.Google Scholar

34 Ibidem, 152.

35 Ibidem, 199.