Topics: Agriculture
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Agriculture dominates nearly every aspect of life in the nexus. Situated higher than the low-lying alluvial plain which conducts the Ganges eastward, the nexus rests on a more flood-resistant flatland. Although little local land benefits from the few irrigation canals available, the general area gains from the natural drainage of the abutting Kaimur Range. Landowners cultivate nearly all of the surrounding land, using electric pumps to draw on the relatively shallow water table when there is insufficient rainfall or canal water available. Their natural fertility supplemented by the widespread use of artificial fertilizer, fields support at least two, but often three annual crops, usually a mix of wet rice, wheat, barley, lentils, and mustard. Sugar cane is a common crop as well. Tractors are used to plow as commonly as oxen, while a group of particularly wealthy landlords may occasionally rent a harvester together. Few pastoralists graze their animals in the immediate vicinity but families keep for household use an assortment of cows, water buffalo, oxen, goats, and/or chickens according to their financial means. Only some cultivators grow fruit or vegetables other than for domestic use. Under government encouragement, several landowners have built large, lucrative fish reservoirs recently. Just a few of the lower-caste residents rely on the one meandering river for fish, although many boys try dauntlessly in the rainy season with a small bamboo pole, a length of line, and a rusty hook. Most residents earn their livelihood through agriculture. Among the eleven villages which roughly comprise the nexus, an average of about 11% of the 13,385 residents declare themselves as cultivators (0.4% of women, 20% of men), 12% as agricultural laborers (4% of women, 19% of men), while 2% say they are occasionally employed (2.5% of women, 1% of men) and 71% are unemployed (93% of women, 51% of men). Obviously, government census data, upon which these figures are based, concerns itself with participants in a public economy and, therefore, do not take into account the considerable domestic and child-rearing labor of women. Despite the Zamindari Abolition Act, a minority of landowners control the the majority of land. In other parts of Bihar, "Naxalite" members of the M.C.C. (Marxist Communist Centre) and upper- and middle-caste and class landowners with their private armies have long struggled violently against one another; yet such conflict is rare in Kaimur district. Occasionally, however, provocative graffiti for the Mazdur Kisan Samgrami Pareshad (Laborer Farmer Fighting Assembly) can be seen on random walls in the nexus area. |