Revision summary
Shifting cultivation is hill livelihood and, when fallow shortens, a slope risk. Elwin treated bewar as economy, not laziness. FRA community title can legalise rotation. Terrace rice, longer fallow, and local council rules are the balance kit. Blanket bans and eviction fail both people and the forest.
Model answer
Introduction
Shifting cultivation, or jhum, is a rotational forest-farm livelihood in many hill tribes. Balance means a live fallow and a live household, not a ban that starves or a short cycle that strips the slope.
Body
The two pressures
- Livelihood: grain, vegetables, and ritual plots for Naga, Mizo, Baiga, and other hill groups. Elwin defended Baiga bewar as economy, not as waste.
- Degradation: shortened fallow after population rise, timber reservation, and cash ginger or oilseed on steep plots. The Forest Act tradition treated jhum as offence, which pushed it onto worse slopes.
How balance is struck
- Restore fallow length with community forest, not only with a planting target. FRA, 2006 community titles can legalise the rotation instead of chasing it.
- Mix settled wet rice in terraces, as in some North-East valleys, with a smaller jhum for ritual and vegetables.
- Pay for ecological service: longer fallow, fire lines, and seed banks through ITDP and hill council funds, not a one-time rubber monocrop.
- Gram Sabha under PESA and traditional councils must set the cycle. A distant working plan cannot.
- Chipko taught that local women may defend the tree that the contractor calls surplus. Jhum policy needs that local veto.
What fails
- Blanket ban, free seedlings of a single market tree, and eviction in the name of carbon all break livelihood and then fail the slope.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD J[Jhum] --> L[Livelihood grain ritual] J --> E[Short fallow erosion] B[FRA PESA council] --> F[Longer fallow mix]
Conclusion
Balance is a long fallow under community title, plus terrace and wage buffers. Criminalising jhum without a living alternative is not conservation.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Purushartha and righteous living today
Next question on this syllabus topic (2021 · Q1(a)). View answer →
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Is all shifting cultivation destructive?
A long-fallow cycle can hold the slope. A two-year cycle on a steep reserved remnant does not.
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Does settled farming always solve it?
Only where water and terrace labour exist. Forced settlement without that is a new poverty.
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