Attitude of Rural Tribal Youths of Arunachal Pradesh in Agricultural Occupation – A Case Study

The rapid growth and diversification of development activities have resulted in much needed expansion of employment opportunities, but at the same time have triggered rural to urban migration. This trend has inadvertently resulted in shift of farm labour to non-farm sectors. Currently, there is a challenge of retaining youngsters in agriculture due to various socio-economic factors, including profitability in agriculture pursuits. Hence a study was done to assess the attitude of rural tribal youth of Arunachal Pradesh on agricultural occupation and to know their migration status. A total of 480 respondents were selected from four districts of Arunachal Pradesh. Data were collected through personal interview method by using semi structured interview schedule. For analysis of data Frequency and percentage were applied. In the study it was found that majority (60.41%) of the youth has no interest in agriculture and 67.29 per cent of youth were willing to shift from agriculture in search of other job and those who are involving in agriculture are also mostly part time (41.45%) before they get other job. The reasons ascertained by the youth is that agriculture demands hard work as well as due to lack of government support, inadequate credit facilities, getting low income from agriculture, insufficient initial capital, unsuitability of land, difficulty to earn income for family with the help of agriculture. The youths have negative attitude towards agriculture considering that agriculture cannot fulfil youth’s socio economic needs. Majority of the youth prefer Government job as their main source of income and many youths of Arunachal are migrated to other parts of the country for proper educational qualification and also because of absence of desirable jobs in the rural areas, poor physical infrastructure and social amenities in the rural areas.