Livelihood Implications of Pulse in an Operating Cropping System

Aims: To delineate the general status of pulse cultivation and enterprise in West Bengal and estimate the nature, level and direction of interactive relationships among the dependent variables, wages and man-days required in pulse crop cultivation, a set of economic and ecological variables were selected for the study.

Study Design: The locale was selected by purposive sampling technique and the respondents, pulse cultivators, were selected by the simple random sampling method.

Place of Study: Dhanara and Manara GP of the Manbazar-1 and Purulia-1 block of Purulia district in West Bengal were purposively selected for the study.

Methodology: In this study 75 respondents, following pulse cultivation, were selected by the simple random sampling method. A preliminary interview schedule was administered to understand the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of the people towards climate changes concept, communication and extension system, effect of climate change on pulse production.

The gathered data were analysed with multivariate analysis. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences V20.0 (SPSS) of IBM was used for analyzing the Coefficient of Correlation, Multiple Regression followed by Stepwise Regression.

Results: Education (X2), Size of holding(x6), Cropping Intensity(x8), Distance From Market(x12) and Crop Biodiversity(x16) variables were found to exert strong and determining contribution to estimate dependent variables wages (y1) and man-days (y2) required in pulse crop cultivation and the set of economic and ecological variables as selected for the study.

Conclusion: The present study has uniquely landed on the value of some important empirical revelation. It can be concluded that pulse as a new intern crop enterprise has been responsive to crop biodiversity, soil health management, and distributive nature of land-resource in the form of fragments and also other ecological and economical aspects. This crop has got a big role for stabilizing national economy by putting up a deterrent to export expenditure in procures pulses from outside India.