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

elong to this category of fanners. The impact of sericulture is
manifested among the marginal and small categories too, though with
the lower level benefits of improving their labour status and stabilising
their economic life.
The concern for mobility is relevant for three disadvantaged
categories, one based on class, another on caste and the third on sex. In a
village context, the poor mostly comprise of the agricultural wage
labourers. Sericulture could become relevant to the poor either directly
by adopting sericulture, or indirectly by involving themselves as lessee,
shareholders or labourers in sericulture. A majority of the marginal
sericulture fanners who were earlier depended on wage labour to
supplement their agriculture income have even moved up to the level of
hiring labour after their successful! adoption to sericulture. Such
mobility has taken away the strain of hard labour and the 'patronial
dependency' of the past, on the one hand, and enhanced their social
prestige, on the other. The adoption of sericulture by the marginal
farmers is proportionately less as compared to the higher land categories
due to certain resource constraints. These constraints put most of them at
the same disadvantaged position as most of the landless except in their
accessibility to land. If they have to benefit from sericulture, there has to
be some external intervention in overcoming some of these constraints.
Or else, they should go for land-lease or share-crop, which is not very
common, due to some inherent limitations. There are a few who have
taken to sericulture after tapping their irrigation potentiality either
through their own resources, which is minimal, or through the utilisation
of IRDP and other schemes, which involve bureaucratic constraints. The
participation of the scheduled castes in sericulture is very meagre as
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