Sarcouncil Journal of Economics and Business Management

Abstract: The char lands of the Brahmaputra system in Assam are among the most environmentally precarious and economically disadvantaged rural territories of the state, subject to recurrent flooding, riverbank erosion and displacement. This paper examines the changing pattern of farm and non-farm employment among 202 char households in Dhubri district, drawn from four settlement categories - oldest chars with settlement, chars of 20-30 years without settlement, highly vulnerable chars and newly formed chars. Household and individual-level descriptive analysis shows that 61.88 % of households were engaged in non-cultivation activities and 44.05 % were classified as non-farm households, marginally exceeding the 41.60 % classified as farm households; a further 14.35 % combined both. At the individual level, cultivation and other services each accounted for 24.5 % of the working-age population and construction for 18.5 %. This non-farm orientation coexists with a severely constrained agrarian base: 44.6 % of households are landless, 50 % are marginal cultivators with an average holding of 0.33 hectares single cropping remains the dominant practice. The paper argues that the observed shift is best read not as a voluntary withdrawal from agriculture but as a differentiated livelihood adjustment to resource scarcity and environmental uncertainty, whose intensity varies systematically with settlement history rather than with vulnerability alone. The findings point to the need for a dual strategy that strengthens feasible agricultural production while improving the quality, skill content and accessibility of non-farm employment in char settlements.