Politics of Swidden farming: Environment and Development in Eastern India [Hardback]

‘The Politics of Swidden Farming, Environment and Development in Eastern India’ offers a new explanation for the changes taking place in slash-and-burn (jhum or swidden) farming in the hills and upland areas of eastern India through an ethnographic case study. Today market-led agriculture is transforming land and labour relations. Jhum cultivators are beneficiaries of state schemes, including internationally funded, community-driven development or biodiversity conservation programmes.

The book traces the story of agroecological change and state intervention to colonial times (including post Indian independence) when Nagaland was seen as the frontier of state and civilization. Contemporary agrarian change can be understood by contextualizing farming not just in terms of the science and technology of agriculture or conservation/biodiversity but also in terms of technologies of rule. For the colonial administrators of the Naga Hills – who saw their role partially in terms of rescue and record ethnography – jhum practices were part of backward Naga customs and traditions. Improving farming practices was bound up with indirect rule as a distinct process of governance involving forms of knowledge and intervention. It was political expediency rather than imperial science that changed local agroecologies and pressurized shifting cultivation. Crucially, neighbouring Naga terrace rice cultivators were promoted as offering a more civilized – yet local – alternative.

‘The Politics of Swidden Farming, Environment and Development in Eastern India’ is an ethnography of swidden farming practised– a characteristically remote, inaccessible and under-researched region of South Asia. The research ties on both archival-historical and contemporary ethnographic discourses on swidden farming and agrarian development among the eastern Naga community inhabiting the northeastern borderland state of Nagaland.