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

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1989, with the fmancial assistance from Swiss Development Cooperation<br />

and W orid Bank, sericultme is being extended today to almost<br />

all the states of India.<br />

Sericulture presently provides whole time and part time<br />

employment to about five-and-a-half million persons in rural areas of the<br />

country, especially to the weaker sections of the society. Out of 6.29<br />

lakh villages in India, sericultme is practised in about 59,000 villages<br />

(CSB 1992:4). As the present area <strong>for</strong> mulberry being just 0.15 per cent<br />

of the tota! cultivated land in India, Sinha (1989:159) visualises a high<br />

growth potential <strong>for</strong> sericulture. He also feels that it could be increased<br />

substantially without affecting the essential food crop cultivation. Thus,<br />

sericultme offers high potential to serve as one of the effective<br />

alternatives in poverty alleviation and rural development.<br />

Socio-Cultural Significance of Sericulture and Research Gaps:<br />

According to Sinha (1989: 157), within the available sources of literature<br />

on silk production, systematic infonnation on the socio-economic<br />

dimensions of the activity, is lacking. While this is so, studies on the<br />

socio-cultural aspects of the activity, that is so significant in the process<br />

of development, are hardly discerned. Cultural factors are often<br />

considered 'very difficult or too abstract to measure', and so, 'largely<br />

ignored in development programmes' (Coletta 1990:87)<br />

The booklet Literature on Sericulture, brought out by the<br />

Karnataka State Sericultme Development <strong>Institute</strong> (KSSDI) in 1990<br />

includes, apart from a list of serial publications, a list of 77 books, 86 M<br />

Sc. and PGDS Dissertations and 31 Doctoral Theses, Of these, there are<br />

only seven works, under the book section, that have got some relevance<br />

20

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