Chapter-III: Rice Production in Assam
3.2: Historical Background of Rice Production in Assam
The knowledge of iron together with that of cattle-powered plough and wet rice was brought to Assam by the Indo-Aryans. The knowledge of agriculture and the smelting and working of iron and other metals had reached Assam long before the Gupta age.
From time immemorial, its agriculture had been dominated by various tribes, mainly of the Tibeto-Burman stock. The agrarian history of the Assam valley was particularly influenced by isolation of these tribes. Rice was the staple crop all throughout the ages as it is at present. Assamese literatures have mentioned varieties of rice grown in Assam.
The Yogini Tantra, a presumably early 16th century Sanskrit work of Assam, speaks of as many as twenty varieties of rice, such as Raja, Soma, Briha, Singha, Banga, Raktasali, Keteki, Kalabinka, Narayana, Madhava, Pradipa, Ashoka and the like. It also speaks of the spring time rice called brihi which evidently meant Ahu. The Katha Guru Charit also contains numerous references to rice cultivation and mentions its varieties. Early epigraphic records mention that in ancient Assam land measurement was done in terms of the amount of rice (dhanya) produced in a given plot of land, i. e., in paddy yield. But as to the relative importance of Sali (wet rice) and Ahu (dry rice) varieties of rice or of permanent and shifting cultivation in pre-Ahom Brahmaputra valley, nothing is definitely known. The rice economy of the hill region, supplemented by food gathering, hunting and fishing, was never self-sufficient. According to Chatterjee (1955), many tribes of the Brahmaputra valley continued to maintain their own peculiar modes of cultivation.
The Bodo-Kachari and allied people of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic group adopted methods of shifting hoe cultivation that survived as late as the nineteenth century. However, in low-lying lands, as a result of closer contacts with the settled population, they had adopted both the plough and wet rice quite early. However, it is not possible to say when exactly the transition to plough cultivation began among them.
There is an oblique reference in an old Assamese chronicle to the damming of a hill- stream of Upper Assam by a cattle-owning Bodo-Kachari tribe of the thirteenth century.
This might suggest artificial irrigation as early as that date. In 1875, the Meches were going through a process of learning the use of the plough from their more advanced neighbours, the Rajbangsis.
The medieval Assam was relatively isolated from the rest of India. Throughout the period, Assamese society, except for its exposure to the Vaishnava movement in the sixteenth century, remained by and large cut-off from the mainstream of Indian life (Ahmed, 1990). Commercial agriculture was a rarity except for mustard cultivation in Kamrup and the north bank of eastern Assam (Das and Saikia, 2011). In medieval period Assam remained a very thinly populated region because of its difficult terrain, an agriculturally retarded tribal population and its forests and swamps. The central belt of riverine tract and belt of submontane tract covered with reed and grass jungles was unfit for any permanent cultivation and habitation. The only available area for permanent habitation and cultivation was the flat expanses of land between the aforesaid belts on either side of the Brahmaputra River. Isolation of the tribes influenced agriculture. It appears from the scant information contained in the Assamese chronicles that the bulk of the tribal population of Upper Assam were still carrying on primitive cultivation of dry crops but significantly no rice or paddy. However, from the very time of their entry into the Assam plains the Ahoms carried on their own Sali cultivation and for that Upper Assam owes much of its settled cultivation. Bonds and dykes had to be thrown up here and there so that the fields could retain rain and flood water in the right quantity which is so necessary for Sali paddy (Guha, 2015). The early Morans and Borahis could hardly produce any surplus rice over and above their subsistence. It may be assumed that the bulk of the Morans and Borahis gradually adopted the wet-rice culture of the migrant Ahoms and merged with the latter in course of a few generations.
In terms of usage, peasant lands were divided into three categories-raised or high lands suitable as homestead or garden sites (bari and basti), low-lying or wet lands (rupit or rowit) suitable for Sali paddy cultivation and faringati (land settled temporarily). It was in the rupit belt that the plough-using people had their earliest permanent settlements (Guha, 2015). Land reclaimed through collective efforts necessarily belonged to the community. The pressure of population on the rupit belt led peasants of all categories to resort to the practice on shifting cultivation of mustard, pulses and Ahu rice. Valley
people were the dominant consumers of rice in comparison to the people inhabiting the hills. Households in Upper Assam chiefly produced Sali or winter rice which is sown in June-July, transplanted in July-August and harvested in October-November as well as Ahu or autumn rice (early maturing rice) sown by broadcasting method in February- March and harvested in June-August, along with other crops.36 Until the thirteenth century Upper Assam appears to have been thinly populated, because of poor cultivation of the soil. Wet rice cultivation increased rapidly in this region and a better supply of food led to a rapid increase of population and further expansion of settled cultivation.
Hundreds of miles of embankment-cum-roads were built in the interest of extending wet rice cultivation.
In Lower Assam, both wet and dry rice are grown. The Katha Guru Charit which contains stores of information about the socio-economic life of the people of the Lower Brahmaputra valley frequently speaks of Ahu rather than Sali variety of rice (Gogoi Nath, 2002). Almost entire population of Assam had only the simplest implements of cultivation. The inhabitants of the Lower Brahmaputra valley which came into contact with early Aryan migrants to this region had possibly known the use of plough drawn by a pair of bullocks much earlier to those of the Upper valley. This is indicated by the term
„hala‟ to measure lands, i.e., lands which could be cultivated by one plough and a pair of bullocks. It is recorded in the Gazetteers that the agricultural implements included a wooden plough (nangal) with an iron tipped share (phal), wooden rakes (jabaka) and mallets (dalimari), a rough bamboo harrow (mai), Yoke (juwali), sickles (kachi), bill hooks (da), knives and different types of bamboo baskets like duli, mer, kharahi, pachi, etc. to keep the products (Gazetteer of India: Assam State Gazetteer, 1999). One traditional way of indicating economic differentiation in the country side was to classify the households on the basis of the number of ploughs operated and not the amount of land hold.
Every year after the Sali harvesting was over, the low-lying fields were temporarily thrown open as common grazing grounds, and this customary practice (garu udang dia) still remains very much alive in Assam. Under Ahoms, the peasant held his
36According to the seasons of seed sowing and seed harvesting rice are classified as Sali, Ahu or Boro. Ahu rice is a pre-kharif spring or autumn rice grown in high, medium and low agro-ecology and both in broadcast and transplanted method. It is an early maturing variety among the rice crops. Sali rice is kharif winter rice grown in medium and low lands by transplanted method. Usually more local varieties of rice are grown in this season. While Boro is a rabi or summer rice grown in rainfed low land and in assured irrigated area. Boro rice is cultivated by transplanted method.
fields with mere usufruct rights. His wet paddy lands always went back to the community when he died or become over-aged. Though the quota of tax-free wet paddy land per eligible adult male was fixed at two puras or about 2.66 acres, it appears that in earlier times each family was allowed to hold as much land as it could reclaim and cultivate. However, in practice, the family‟s working capacity set the limit to 3 or 4 puras per adult male. Due to the impermanent nature of farming practice and paucity of investment, productivity of peasant economy remained low.
During the colonial period in Assam, there were broadly two type of peasant cultivation-permanent and fluctuating. Permanent cultivation was carried on both in rupit rice fields and on basti (homestead)/bari (garden) lands. The fluctuating or shifting plough cultivation which was reminiscent in many ways of tribal jhum (slash-and-burn) culture was, on the other hand, carried on in flood-prone or sub-montane jungle grasslands for growing early-maturing rice (Ahu), mustard-seed and pulses, etc. during the relatively dry season. These lands known as faringati rapidly exhausted their fertility in two or three years despite crop rotation to a limited extent. The riverine belt known as the char-chapari area is heavily flooded during the rains. Traditionally, chapari lands used to be put under two major crops, Ahu rice and mustard, sometimes with the advantage of double cropping. Weeding is as much difficult in the sub-montane (Dooars) as on chapari lands.
The rice economy of the Brahmaputra valley was capable of producing a considerable surplus in the past. Rice was produced in „very great abundance‟ and Welsh (1794) asserted that „a scarcity had never been known to happen from natural causes‟.
But as difficulties of export came in the way, production was limited by the absence of a local market. Of the three varieties of rice - Ahu, Bao and Sali grown in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, Sali was the most productive. Sali-oriented agriculture of the Ahoms in Upper Assam yielded a higher surplus than the largely Ahu-oriented cultivation of others.
The Assamese speaking Hindu mainstream people as well as the Tai-speaking migrant Ahoms cultivated transplanted wet-rice (Sali). Sali paddy was preferred in different aspects; it takes a long time, at least five months, to mature. Therefore, Sali fields rarely allow double-cropping. But as Ahu matures early, it is sometimes followed by another crop, pulses or mustard. Sali cultivation requires more labour at the stage of transplantation, but for the subsequent period labour requirement is less because no weeds grow at all on the water-logged fields. In a thinly populated labour scarce state,
Sali rice harvesting did not pose any problem. Moreover, Ahoms are accustomed with the cultivation of Sali rice. Ahu cultivation requires continuous weeding out until harvesting. As Ahu fields are mostly situated in the forested sub-montane and riverine belt, the crops are exposed to wild animals or to untimely floods. Hence they are very much uncertain. Moreover, the yield of Ahu rice is small and its quality inferior as compared to Sali. The third variety of rice, Bao is generally sown broadcast. It matures late and its harvesting time coincides with that of Sali. Like Ahu, Bao also gives per unit of land a lesser yield than Sali. The yield of Sali was fifty to two hundred pounds higher than that of Ahu or Bao rice per acre of cultivated land. Moreover, in case of sowing broadcast that is practised in Ahu and Bao, the seed requirement is at least twice as high as that for transplanted Sali. Under the circumstances, the spread of Sali cultivation, at the cost of the two other varieties of rice, may be taken as a progressive trend in agriculture. Literary records of medieval times supported by early British records show that the extent of cultivation of the transplanted and high yielding Sali rice in Assam was larger than that of Ahu and Bao, the figure being 70 percent, 22 percent and 8 percent respectively. Watter Hamilton also states that about 3/4th of the produce of the crops formed transplanted rice (A Geographical, Statistical and Historical Account of Hindustan and the Adjacent Countries, Vol. 2, Reprint, Delhi, 1971). Production of Sali was much wide spread in the Upper Brahmaputra valley and that of Ahu and Bao or shifting rice had been extensive in the Lower part of the valley. Guha (2015) writes, “As one moves from the district of Sibsagar, the Cradle and Core of the Ahom dominion in the eastern extremity of the valley towards the west or towards the north one finds that the importance of Sali in the total rice crop goes on decreasing…...the percentage of the total rice lands under Sali in Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts are the highest being 92 percent and 85 percent respectively.”
Double cropping and crop rotation were practised only on a limited scale-the former never exceeding thirteen percent of the net cropped acreage. Yet, because of the natural soil fertility, the average yield of threshed paddy gram per acre could be favourably compared with that in other parts of India. This average came out to be 1512 Ibs per acre (or 6.2 maunds37 per bigha) in the case of Sali (aman) variety of rice and 1322 Ibs per acre (or 5.4 maunds per bigha) in the case of Ahu (aush) rice. Around in 1852, the gross yield of rice (cleaned) from an acre of land in Assam was 12 maunds and
37 1 maund=40 kg.
cultivated acreage per head of population was 1.02 in Assam proper in 1853. In the early years, the Assam Company had to import the entire supplies of rice to its labour from Bengal districts. Later, rice purchases were made also in Darrang and Nowgong districts, but occasional imports from outside did not stop. During the eighties and early nineties the rice imports from Bengal into the Brahmaputra valley ranged from four to five lakh maunds per year. An increasing inflow of labour recruits to the plantation and railways construction led to rising prices of rice. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Assam Proper had become a deficit area in foodgrains. The annual rice imports were estimated at not less than three lakh maunds in 1873.
Tea industries developed in the state had direct impact on the peasant economy as a source of market demand for rice. However, total acreage under rice does not appear to have had appreciatively increased in Assam in response to this demand because of the general shortage of manpower. In Assam Proper,38 index of rice acreage base 1884- 85=100, rose to 145 in 1886-87 but gradually fell and reached 113 in 189-92. Since 1893-94 acreage index of rice was around 120 but significantly fell to 116 in 1900-01.
Percentage area under rice to total cropped area for Assam Proper declined from 73.47 percent in 1882-83 to 63.44 in 1891-92 and then it remained around 65 to 67 percent till 1900-01(Guha, 2015). Table 3.1 shows the yield of rice in Assam during British rule.
Table-3.1: Per Acre Yield of Rice in British Assam (1891-1946)
Year Rice Yield (Ib per acre)
1891 743
1892 818
1893 842
1894 737
1895 791
1942 726
1943 896
1944 744
1945 807
1946 821
Source: Blyn (1966: 255-56, 292)
The late 19th century saw a rise in the price of rice. Price index rose from 96.71 (1861- 64) to 153.45 (1898-1901) (Guha, 1991). But with limited market access, deficient labour supply and low marketable surplus, ordinarily peasants could not reap the benefits of this rise in price. As tea plantations were turning out huge profit, the percentage of cultivable areas of Assam under tea plantations grew from zero to 27.2 percent between
38 Originally the erstwhile Ahom territory alone and later for the whole of the Brahmaputra Valley that was under common Commissionership [Gait, E.A., A History of Assam (second edition, Calcutta/Simla, 1926), p. 337]
1839 to 1897-98 while acreage under rice kept pace with a slow growth (Das and Saikia, 2011). Under the pressure of an increasing immigrant population, the prices of paddy and other peasant crops recorded a rising trend, but not beyond the rates at which these could be obtained from Bengal. Hence, Assamese peasants‟ gain from the prices remained modest.