Socio-Economic Condition of Organic Farmers in Sikkim: A Study South Sikkim

Farmers are considered as an integral part of human kind, which allows human to sustain for a long periods. In other words, they are the growers and feed millions of millions people around the world. The sustainability of farmers depend on nature and artificial factors, which of course determined their socio-economic conditions. Since farmer produce essential commodities and increase the integrity between primary and secondary sectors but still they are living under the shadow of poverty, debt and illiteracy. These kinds of output or result discourage the youngsters to associate with the same profession (farmer) of their ancestors or parents, which is the only source of income. This type of discontinuity or change in occupation can trigger the migration process started from a rural region and ended in an urban sector. While in developing and under-developed countries, life in rural areas survive on the mercy of the landlords, traditional moneylenders (Saukars) and in the support of nature as well. Along with dependency in nature, the factors like right price, absence of proper marketing, presence of middlemen and shortage of storage facilities decrease the bargaining ability of farmers and force them to sell their commodity on throwaway prices. This type of practise drags the farmer towards poverty, frustration, suicide and so on. The social, economic and political policies, which concerns the development of socio-economic nature of the rural farmers force researchers to raise different questions such as why farmers are always poor or they are living under low economic condition, since they are feeding millions of people?, why famers are forced into commit suicide and migration? why their children are illiterate, dying due to starvation and low health care? Therefore, in this research, author tries to find out the basic factors, which are sufficient to answer the above-mentioned questions. However, this research is only confined within Sikkim, where the type of farming is organic, thus results or outcomes of the same may not be applicable to all other states of India.