R C S T S

Scheduled Tribe Development Department in collaboration with Rubber Board has started rubber plantation in lands owned by tribal families in Kerala with the twin objectives of lifting their economic status and raising natural rubber production. It was expected that the plantation assets would continuously provide income to the beneficiaries for two and a half decades. The project estimates that each beneficiary would earn an average income of Rs 20000/- per annum and generate sufficient employment opportunities for tribals.

The study examines the impact of rubber plantation schemes on the economic status of tribal beneficiaries. The specific objectives of the study are:

To assess the impact of rubber plantation scheme on the socio-economic status of tribals;

To analyse its impact on employment generation of the tribals; and

To identify the bottlenecks during the implementation of the schemes and to suggest measures for improvement.

The ayacut of 45 Minor Irrigation Schemes spreads over 884.3 hectares possessed by 2420 farmers (Table I). The average size of holding of a farmer turned out to be 0.36 ha. The operational holdings of 80.8 per cent of the farmers was less than 0.5 ha.

Methodology

Selection of S.T. Settlements

S.T. Settlement of Achencoil in Kollam district and Kuttappara in Thiruvananthapuram district were purposively selected for the study on the following grounds.

The Rubber Board identified Achencoil and Kuttappara S.T. Settlements as ideal locations for rubber cultivation.

Rubber Plantation programme was initiated in these settlements during first phase viz Achencoil in 1988 and Kuttappara in 1989.

Gestation period of plantations (six years) has been completed in these areas.

These settlements are accessible by roads.

The selected S.T. Settlements are not far away from the State Capital.

The beneficiaries in these settlements are comparatively less as compared to other settlements (42 in Achencoil and 88 in Kuttappara).

Selection of S.T. Beneficiaries

The list of S.T. beneficiaries of the rubber cultivation schemes in the selected S.T. settlements were collected from the S.T. Development Department. From the list, a few beneficiaries were selected adopting stratified random sample method. In Achencoil, the 42 beneficiaries of the scheme were classified into 3 groups based on the area possessed by them under rubber plantations viz, 0.47-0.59 ha, 0.60-0.72 ha and 0.73-0.85 ha. From each of the strata altogether 30 beneficiaries were proportionately and randomly selected.

In Kuttappara, the 88 beneficiaries were classified into 3 groups based on the area of rubber plantations viz, 0.19-0.27, 0.28-0.36 and 0.37-0.45 and 30 families were proportionately and randomly selected from each of the strata. Stratification of beneficiaries was not uniform in the two settlements, as there was substantial difference in the size of holdings of tribals in these areas. In Achencoil beneficiary area under rubber per beneficiary has been 0.69 ha whereas in Kuttappara it is 0.34 ha. The data were collected from these randomly selected beneficiaries through direct personal interview during January 2002 with the help of tribal volunteers using structured questionnaires specially designed for the purpose. The officers of the State Planning Board randomly verified the schedules in the settlements to test the reliability of information.