Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, India
Online published on 4 October, 2013.
It is commonly found in agricultural societies that there is a direct relationship between occupation and landholding. In this paper, we have undertaken an anthropological field based study among a group of peasant families in the village under Kharagpur- I Block in Paschim Medinipur district, on the changes that have been taking place after the acquisition of agricultural land of some families in a village for the establishment of a heavy industry. The findings revealed that acquisition of agricultural land for industry leads to occupational change among the landloser families who depended on agriculture for their livelihood. Quantitative and qualitative data from the field showed that the landloser families have undergone in their occupational pattern and the type of occupation, the landloser families chose was also found to be related to the amount of compensation money received.
