Evolution of the Rural Non-farm Activities in Murshidabad District of West Bengal: A Brief Study from Historical Perspectives

This paper provides a brief historical account of the rural non-farm activities in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal in India. It is observed that although Murshidabad has been fundamentally an agrarian district, it has also been experiencing the coexistence of both the farm and non-farm activities, to a considerable extent, for a long period of time. Murshidabad became one of the important centers of trade and commerce from the 18th century. Availability of cheap labour and raw materials, plenty of navigable water routes and concentration of political power for a long time created a favourable environment for the industrial expansion in this district. This caused structural changes in the district. In fact, a rural transformation from purely agricultural subsistence-economy to an agro-based non-farm economy had taken place during that period which brought about immense economic prosperity to the district. However, that prosperity did not last long due to some political, economic and social reasons. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the advent of the industrial revolution in Britain led to a gradual breakdown of the traditional indigenous structure of the district and there emerged a purely colonial economic structure influenced and controlled by the British. The paper focuses on the fact that rural development through the expansion of non-farm sector must take into account the historical perspective along with the pure socio-economic features of a particular region.