A study on occupational structure and its diversity among farm families of northern districts of West Bengal, India

India is a country where most of the population depends on farming for their livelihood and survival. Surprisingly, its contribution to national GDP is very low due to many factors like less productivity and marginalization of landholding. For decades, it was thought of that increasing production and income of farmers would itself increase their socio-economic condition. Conventional livelihood systems are prone to different natural and man-made shocks with less stability and resilience capacity. Livelihood diversity is a crucial strategy for the survival of rural farming communities to reduce vulnerability to different livelihood shocks by making a diverse portfolio of occupations and income source. The current study was conducted in three selected districts of West Bengal namely Cooch Behar, Dakhsin Dinajpur and Kalimpong to see the diversity and dynamics of occupational structure in farming communities. Information was collected using standard interview schedule from a sample size of 300 farm families and information were analyzed using various statistical tools like percentage, mean, standard deviation, R software programming. According to the study, the occupational structure in North Bengal was found to be primarily agriculture based. Most farmers prefer agriculture as their primary occupation followed by migration based works. Business and service based primary occupation groups come in the third and fourth category respectively. Agriculture again is the most preferred secondary occupations for almost all the other primary occupation groups except agriculture. The occupational diversity of the farmers in the study area was found to be at medium level. The diversity was found to be more at Terai and Old alluvial zones compare to the Hills zones. Over the years, the diversity was found to be at an increasing trend.