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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON AGRICULTURE AND STATUS OF DECISION MAKING OF WOMEN IN BIHAR
    (Dr.RPCAU, Pusa, 2021) KUMARI, KALPANA; Singh, K.M.
    The present study was carried out to assess the Impact of Migration on Agriculture and Status of Decision Making of Women in Bihar. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 360 households comprising of 180 migrant and non-migrant households each from 12 villages of Samastipur, Darbhanga and Madhubani districts of North Bihar. The assessment of impact of male migration in empowering left behind women in various domains of household decisions revealed that the migration of male member have adequately empowered only 29.44 per cent of women. Larger proportion of women respondents (43.89 per cent) were moderately empowered and 29.67 per cent fell under low empowerment group. Women had enough power to make decisions about their health, education, and agricultural production. Women's decision-making in all farm activities, such as crop selection, input purchasing, labour management, and farm produce sales, indicated a fairly moderate level of empowerment. The yield of paddy was observed to be at par (27.49 q/ha) for migrant‟s households and (27.36 q/ha) for non-migrant farms. Similar trend was observed in case of wheat crop except machine labour charges which was found to be comparatively high in case of non-migrant households. The yield gap was more pronounced in the case of wheat, where the mean yield for migrant was found to be 30.21q/ha compared to 26.88q/ha for non-migrants. The Cobb-Douglas method was used to estimate the efficiencies of production parameters such as area, capital, human labour, machine labour, and irrigation cost for each crop from each group of respondents. Area under paddy (0.417), material costs (seed, fertilizers, and manure) (0.941), and machine labour (0.017) were found to have positive and statistically significant regression coefficients. The irrigation charge coefficient was found to be positive but statistically insignificant. Paddy cultivation in Bihar is generally done during the monsoon season, so external irrigation is less commonly used for paddy cultivation. Coefficient of human labour was negative in case of migrant farmers, showing excess use of human labours. In case of non-migrant, land and human labour coefficients were estimated positive and statistically significant. In case of wheat production, that migrant‟s households are required to use their land and human labour judiciously in cultivation of paddy crop. The regression coefficient of human labour under wheat cultivation (-0.027) was negative and insignificant that indicated that non-migrant farms use labour more judiciously. For wheat cultivation, regression coefficients of all the parameters of production are positive and significant except machine labour in case of migrants‟ households. For maize cultivation, migrant farms have used capital and human labour in more precise ways. The logistic regression model was used to determine the factors that causes migration revealed that young people from low-income families and those living in substandard housing were more likely to migrate. It may be observed that, education levels, land holding size, and marital status were all strongly associated with migration. Migration has significantly empowered left-behind women in numerous household and livelihood tasks. Migration had a good influence on migrants' households in terms of resource use efficiency, which helped to boost agricultural productivity. There is a positive relationship between migration and educational attainment, but a negative relationship between migration and migrants‟ age. Migrants' households spent most of their remittances on food (51 per cent). The most common destinations were mostly metropolitan and industrialised areas, where major portion of migrants were absorbed into construction work. It was also discovered that the main cause for their return migration was their desire to work at their native place.