Bengali Report - Bengalee Association Bihar

The process of rehabilitation of the refugee Bengali households had displayed two
different patterns (Table 21). In West Champaran and East Champaran, nearly all
the refugee households were provided with at least 3 acres of land, which is
generally considered to be adequate for efficient agricultural operations. In Purnea
and Katihar, however, only some refugee Bengali households had received land
from the state government, and the average amount of allocated land was much
smaller than in West Champaran and East Champaran. Unfortunately, due to
several social disadvantages, the refugee Bengali population in West Champaran
and East Champaran has not been able to make best use of their land endowments
and their present socio-economic status, as discussed in the previous section, is
rather poor.
Table 21 : Percentage Distribution of Refugee Bengali Households by Land Allocated to
Them
Districts
No
Land
Upto
1.00
Land Allocated (acres)
1.01 –
2.00
30
2.01 –
3.00
3.00 –
5.00
Above
5.00
Total
Purnea 80.9 2.8 3.8 1.8 4.0 6.7 100.0
Katihar 63.0 20.4 6.4 3.6 6.6 0.0 100.0
West Champaran 10.6 6.7 3.1 0.9 71.6 7.1 100.0
East Champaran 1.5 0.1 0.3 0.1 88.4 9.6 100.0
Bhagalpur 100.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0
All Districts 19.3 5.7 2.8 1.0 64.1 7.2 100.0
Caste Status
One of the social disadvantage of the refugee Bengali population is that they are
generally from among the lower caste categories, some of them belonging to
scheduled castes. Table 22 presents the distribution of refugee Bengali households
by their caste category, according to the caste list of the Bihar government. For the