Pallavi Devi, Pallabi Bora, Pallabi Das
College of Agricultural, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, Assam
pallabi.bora@aau.ac.in
Horticulture shares more than 33 per cent to the total agricultural output of the country. Recognizing the vast potential of horticulture in stimulating the growth of Indian agriculture, Government had launched a scheme of National Horticulture Mission for in the year of 2005-06. Assam is rich in horticulture crops and has tremendous potentialities for commercialization. Therefore, an initiative was taken to launch Horticulture Mission for North Eastern and Himalayan states (HMNEH) for holistic development of this sector. The present study was undertaken during 2020-21 in Jorhat and Kamrup districts of Assam to assess the impact of the mission for last four years i.e. from 2016-17 to 2019-20. A total of 142 respondents (71 each of beneficiaries receiving banana suckers from the mission and non-beneficiaries who already had banana plantation) were selected with the help of snow ball technique. For analyzing the data, appropriate statistical tools such as Frequency, Per cent age, and Chi square test were used. The impact of the scheme was measured with respect to changes in production, productivity, women employment generation, changes in income and expenditure, food availability, health status, changes in dwelling houses, structural changes and asset creation. The findings revealed that beneficiaries had greater positive changes in all these impact assessment indicators as compared to non-beneficiaries. Castes of beneficiaries was associated with maximum number of impact indicators namely employment generation (χ2=50.05*), income changes (χ2=58.23*), food availability (χ2 =26.44*), production (χ2 =18.20**), productivity (χ2 =15.93**), health (χ2=22.58*), expenditure (χ2 =10.11**), asset creation (χ2 =17.53**) and structural changes (χ2=48.41**). Moreover, age was found to be associated with employment generation (χ2 =15.57*) and food availability status (χ2=17.08*). Education (χ2 =10.24**) was associated with production and family type is also associated with food availability (χ2 =4.73**), health (χ2 =8.26**).