Jhum Cultivation among the Eastern Nagas: Changing Land, Labour, and Social Relations in Nagaland

Abstract

The paper analyses the dialectics of land and labour relation to assess the multifaceted and changing relationship between nature and culture in jhum development villages. Shifting cultivation, locally known as jhum in Indian northeast, reminds us of an archaic form of farming practised in out-of-the-way upland spaces. Today, this form of farming is fast changing into plantation, agri-business and monoculture because of state, donor, and community-focused bottom-up development programmes. Nevertheless, jhum remains a „way of life‟ and livelihood option for many remote highland farming communities across the Eastern Himalayas. The paper draws upon my ethnographic study on Naga slash and burn farming and the ways it has changed over time with the introduction of agricultural demonstrators, subsidies, microcredits, plantation crops and Baptist work ethics introduced by the village Church. More fundamentally, it reflects the patronage relations between village chiefs, their subjects (clan members), political go-between, and the state. These interfaces developed over time as colonial administrators and anthropologists established their authority and control over Naga Hills in the late nineteenth century with the help of village intermediaries locally known as dobashis. Labour and land relations have both transmuted from communal– common property resources to „private assets‟ with different meanings attached to right and control over „land‟ and „labour‟.