Peasants’ Income Diversification in Bangladesh

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume II, Issue VIII, August 2018 | ISSN 2454–6186

Peasants’ Income Diversification in Bangladesh

 Md. Shafikuzzaman Joarder

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh.

Abstract: The study aims to explore pattern and grounds of income diversification of the peasants in Bangladesh. By applying a mix method approach, the study interviewed 103 peasants from two villages of northwestern Bangladesh and analyzed the data accordingly. Evidence shows that drought, seasonality, discriminatory tenancy arrangement and in-effective market mechanism substantially reduce farm income and reshape peasants’ livelihood in many ways. Subsequently, peasants strive to earn more from various off-farm sectors to cope with recurrent challenges, and with a hope to ameliorate their capability for future investment. Income diversification strategies, however, do not show a strong affiliation with income well-being and successful coping of the peasants. Therefore, this paper recommends for formulating a better policy to protect peasant livelihood.

Keywords: Peasants, Income diversification, Coping, Rural development, Bangladesh.

I. INTRODUCTION

The nature, social bases and socioeconomic consequences of peasantry were among the most longstanding foci in rural sociological research that received a substantially increased attention and exhibited considerable theoretical reformation in the 1970s and 1980s in many countries (Buttel et al. 1990). However, ‘peasant as a concept’ is still complicated because of its contentious history. In general, it is often referred to poor and landless farmers and agricultural laborers who have low social status (Webster 1926). From a social point of view, peasants always occupied the lowest position in the social, political and economic hierarchy (Singharoy 2004, Freedman 1999, Shanin 1971, Wolf 1966). Beteille (1974) identified peasants of Indian subcontinent from three major perspectives, such as (a) they were attached to land either as owner, tenant, or sharecropper (b) they occupied a lower economic and political position in the society, and (c) oppression and exploitation of the peasants had a political dimension. Scholars also distinguished ‘peasants’ as rural cultivators, for whom subsistence agriculture is the most important means of livelihood (Sivakumar & Hansen 2007, Schüren 2003).

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