LIVELIHOOD

Sundarban Livelihood: Prospects of Cottage & Small Scale Industries

Administratively Sundarban consisting of 54 islands is put under two districts – North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas. It covers 6 Blocks of North 24-Parganas and 13 Blocks of South 24-Parganas with 44% of its total area under forest. The group of islands is interspersed by innumerable rivers, creeks, etc. which makes most of the area inaccessible. The entire area of Sundarban has been classified into inhabited area of forest area. Economically, people of Sundarban are very poor nearly 90% depending on agriculture and 50% of whom being landless. Agriculture is being operated traditional in the reclaimed land which is surrounded by embankments to protect the inflow of tidal saline water of the river.

With limited irrigation facilities’ leading to mono cropping agriculture is also hamstrung by salinity by both ground water and surface water. Moreover, majority of the farmers are small and marginal. Hence, the most required capital investment in agriculture is not taking place. A large section of people in and around Sundarban earn their livelihood from fishing and pisciculture. But fish cultivation is not carried on scientific method. Moreover, other facilities required for the pisciculture like fish-feed; processing facilities, storing facilities, marketing facilities etc. are not available locally.

Forests with variety of flowering plants provide center for honeybees. During flower season of mangroves the swarms of honeybees colonies in the mangrove forests and fill the hives with honey. Quite expectantly, those honey are good sources of livelihood more than thousands of families. The abundance of flowering mangrove are around with increasing a forestation along the riverbanks, proclaims the immense potentiality for pisciculture. What is lacking is necessary training facilities and institutional support in the field.

Sundarban area is still deprived of the presence any large scale and medium scale industries. Based on mostly traditional skills, only a needful of tiny industrial units like pottery, wooden furniture, fish net, bidi making, jorry, black smith, jute rope, village bakery, brick, pantiles, etc. have come up. Inaccessibility of the region and dearth of infrastructure facilities, etc. appear to account for this industrial backwardness.

For laying necessary foundation of modern industrial development process is required to take off the growth of agricultural development. The significance of setting up necessary infrastructure, like communication, power, banking, etc. are duly emphasized too. Likewise service sector, particularly two regions have great potential in the area. Trade and business can be another area. In short, the development of these sectors will have synergic impact on overall process of development. It is needless to reiterate the role of cottage and small-scale industries in development of backward regions, like Sundarban. In fact, initially the promotion of small scale and cottage industries will be very much necessary to improve the economy of Sundarban for its poor economic base and undeveloped infrastructure. For small-scale sector, which is better known for its greater employment intensity, less capital need and malleable nature, may be promoted both to supplement the income of poor families and as an independent occupation.

Sundarban hosts a great no. of educated unemployed youth so they must find themselves engaged in self-employment and in different industrial activities. Suitably they may be encouraged to start small industries based on local resource and demand. Development of skills and entrepreneurship are pre-requisite for that in addition to other factors.
Sundarban Development Board is engaged for all round development of infrastructure, awareness and training, agriculture, forests, fisheries, C & SSI & women programme, solar, tele network, public utility, etc.
With the coordinated efforts of all concerned it is hoped that devising of a developed paradigm and implementation of the same for Sundarban will not be a problem.