Agriculture and Forestry Based Livelihood Capital Assessment

Abstract

Livelihood primarily defines the bases through which a rural household sustains its members. The primary concern of sustainable livelihood is to focus the poorest and most marginalized sections of the society. The Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh is one of the largest districts in the state and one where more than 60 % of population is still dependent on agriculture. However, the landholdings size distribution is highly fragmented; more than 80 % of the households have from a marginal to a small (less than 2 ha) area of land. Hence, a detailed investigation was carried out in three agro-ecological zones of Kangra district to capture the available livelihood capital of the villages. Two villages from each respective zone were selected, based on single uniform criteria of the proximity of the forest areas. The results state that the natural capital increases from the high hill region to the low hill region, as well as concerns the rest of the capitals. However, the importance of several capitals on defining the livelihood varies as at high-hill and mid-hill regions; social capital plays a more important role in the villages that are nearer to forest areas. On the other hand, the interrelationship of livelihood outcome (income) does not have predicting factors among the several capitals.