SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

of labour, etc. These sometimes extend even to the supply of mulberry
leaves at times of need, and seeking of service and knowledge at times
of emergency and distress. The property divisions among the siblings
sometimes facilitate in the expansion of the enterprise. All the
sericulturists in the village, for instance, can be grouped into a few sets
of kindred families within each caste identity. Similarly, the genealogies
of the sericulture families in the E N Pura as well as in other study
villages also reveal a stream of close kinship relations among most of the
sericulturists. This brings out the possibility of diffusion of sericulture
through kinship influence either directly or indirectly. As is seen, the
expansion of sericulture has become multi-fold as the sericulture
families expand and become nuclear.
Thangavelu of E N Pura is an unmarried youth when he started sericulrure in 1975
with just 0.60 acre. It was when the family was undivided (See case No.2, in
Appendix n. Today, all his brothers are married and living separately. All oftbem
have adopted sericulture and on a larger scale. The total operation of their mulbeny
gardens stands out to be about 10 acres.
There are, however, a few instances of drop-outs from sericulture
as they become nuclear. In such instances, as in the case of Rajamani of
E N Pura, it is mostly due to the inadequacy of family labour that leads
to their giving up sericulture. There are a few cases, in which sericulture
has been adopted by the sibling families in successive years. In some of
these cases, the sons of the sibling brothers are the ones who assume the
mantle of the main sericulturists.
As for the kin interaction, the sibling interaction is more a
negative factor than a positive one. The poorer interaction among the
sibling families is mostly due to the intra-family rivalries that prop into,
in the context of parental family situations and later, in the context of
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