The Centre for International Trade & Development School of International Studies of JNU will organize a seminar on April 30, 2013 at 11:30:12:30 hours. The renowned Indrani Roy Chowdhury, Associate Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia, will be the honored speaker. The title of the seminar is - Economic Analysis of Jhum: Collective Action, Social Capital and Labour Market. The venue for the seminar will be Room No. 203, second floor, SIS building, JNU.
As per a press release issued by the University, the study aims to examine the persistence of shifting cultivation (Jhum cultivation) - a predominant mode of agricultural practice in many hilly regions of South Asia, including most of the states of North East India. The center is trying to build a formal game theoretic model which attempts to clarify how the existence of social capital can lead to persistence in Jhum. It is found that all equilibria involve too much labour being allocated to Jhum, compared to the case where there is no social capital. The perception relies on the fact that marginal social capital of the families is increasing in the labour being employed by the other families. This makes the amount of labour employed by the families as strategic complements and hence the result.
In addition, the release also said that turning to the relative statics they found that the results depend on whether the equilibrium is a corner one or not. Suppose that the population is not too large (as for example is the case of Mizoram), than it is found that under the appropriate parameter restrictions there is a unique Nash equilibrium (corner equilibrium), where all of the labour is employed in Jhum cultivation. In this case they find that an increase in outside wages has no impact on labour allocated to Jhum, thus providing a theory of persistence of Jhum. Interestingly, they found that in the absence of social capital, such persistence cannot arise. Further they found that the amount of labour allocated to jhum is very large compared to the socially optimal level.
