Revision summary
Shifting cultivation rotates ash plots and fallow on clan or village land. Households mix crops, forest produce, and wages. Elwin treated jhum as a forest adaptation, not laziness. FRA and Fifth Schedule are the legal files for title. Markets and bans are turning the type into a squeezed mixed economy.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Shifting cultivators in India rotate forest plots, ash, and fallow. Their economy is mixed, communal in land, and now squeezed by the state and the market.
Body
Economy and labour
- Plots are cleared, burnt, cropped, and left to recover. Rice, millets, and vegetables mix with hunt, forest produce, and wage work.
- Land is often clan or village territory, not a saleable title, which Elwin defended against forest reservation.
- Labour is household and kin. Surplus is small; ritual feast still organises prestige.
Social and political squeeze
- FRA 2006 can recognise cultivation and community forest, but many jhum villages lack titles.
- Fifth Schedule belts of the North-East and Central India show both jhum and its criminalisation as “waste”.
- Cash crops and mines pull youth out, so the socioeconomic type is no longer a closed isolate.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD J[Jhum fallow] --> K[Kin clan land] J --> F[Forest produce] T[Title FRA] --> S[Squeeze by state market]
Conclusion
Shifting cultivators combine fallow agriculture with forest and wage. Their characteristic problem today is title and stigma, not a primitive mind.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Elwin-Ghurye Debate on Tribes
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q5(d)). View answer →
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Is shifting cultivation only in the North-East?
It is famous there, but Central Indian and other belts also practised it.
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Does FRA ban jhum?
It can recognise rights. Forest departments may still treat fire as offence.
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