Impact of shifting Cultivation on environment in the North-East India and Its Sustaunability / Ram Krishna Mandal

Large sections of the people in the North Eastern Region of India are Tibeto-Mangoloid origin Speaking variety of languages. The hills constitute about 70 per cent of the total land area. sphere shifting agriculture, locally called "jhum" is the chief land use. There are hundreds of different tribes in the region differing linguistically and culturally. The entire region is more or less geographically isolated from the rest of the country. The only gateway to rest of India for all the seven states is Guwahati, the capital city of Assam. The whole of the region is almost surrounded by international borders. The growth rate of population is much larger in all the states of North Eastern Region as compared to the all India average. Due to lack of plain land for agriculture, the farmer in the humid tropics has practiced for centuries the method of "shifting agriculture" or popularly known in India as "jhum". This is the simplest method of cultivation available to the tribal population living in the hilly region. There is no other alternative way of cultivating the land in the hill areas. The shifting cultivation is the natural way of life to the tribal people in the hill areas. In fact man-nature relationship of a community is reflected in its mode of resource use across ideological axis. At a given level of ideology man's material requirements and his perception of nature and natural phenomena determines his interaction with nature and characterises ideal type of the mode of resource use.