Socio-Economic development of tribal society in Arunachal Pradesh: A study on the role of ORANGE cultivation

Arunachal Pradesh, with its undulating topography and varied agro-climatic conditions provides immense potentiality for growing temperate, tropical and sub-tropical fruits and vegetables. Being a tribal dominated and industrially backward state, the people of the state has been engaged in agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood. Out of the total land (51236 hectare) under horticultural crops like orange, pineapple, apple, banana, kiwi etc., in the state, land under orange cultivation (21740 hectare) alone account for more than 42 percent. In spite of annual production of oranges of around 26716 metric tons produced in rural areas, commercial production of oranges has yet to touch the cultivators in massive way due to lack of awareness, poor infrastructure, transportation and communication bottleneck etc. Nevertheless, people of the state especially those of East Siang District have started commercial production of Mandarin Oranges satisfactorily. It is estimated that a cultivator can earn a handsome income of more than Rupees 1 lakh annually from orange orchard having 1 hectare land. In fact, contributions of orange cultivation towards socio-economic life of tribal people have found to be very significant.

In this backdrop, an attempt has been made in this paper to raise issues and discourses with regard to the role of oranges cultivation in the socio-economic upliftment of tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh. The study is based on primary and secondary data.