District Information and Project Implementing Clusters

The project would focus on eight out of 11 districts  namely, Mon, Longleng, Zunheboto,Wokha, Kiphire, Phek, Mokokchung and Kohima. Dimapur district is not being considered under this project as it is largely situated in the plains. Tuensang and Peren districts are also not included as these districts are covered under the World Bank supported North East Rural Livelihoods Programme (NERLP). The eight selected districts have approximately 200,000 rural households. The project would adopt a two stage targeting strategy:

First, the project  would adopt geographic targeting by excluding the districts with other

major development projects. The  project area in a district will be selected primarily based on

high levels of jhum cultivation with an aim to  increase the jhum cycle and at the same time

increase the number of years of jhum cultivation to make a gradual shift towards settled

agriculture.

Second, the project would adopt a social targeting approach by excluding the households

with permanent government jobs. The target group categories would therefore  include all

tribal households involved in jhum farming and those unable to take up jhum cultivation on

account of labor shortages and other vulnerable households having persons with disability

and other challenges. Women are the main contributors to both agriculture and livestock

activities and therefore gender would be mainstreamed into the project activities so that

women have access and control over  resources both in terms of targeting of project activities

and also their participation in various committees of the project. Similarly, youth would be

engaged in various project activities in Nagaland, the project would select a cluster of

villages in each district depending on the size of the district after excluding the clusters

allocated the proposed JICA project. A cluster approach would be followed in order to ensure

ease of delivery of project services and to promote economies of scale in  selected

commodities to facilitate aggregation of both inputs and output for enhancing marketability

to outside markets and also reduction in transaction costs.

The main village clusters selection criteria include:

(i) at least 75% of the villages with high levels of jhum cultivation with more than 60% of the

households undertaking jhum cultivation;

(ii) more than 50% of the jhum cultivating villages have a jhum cycle of eight years and less;

(iii) one cluster per district covering the blocks falling in the cluster in their  entirety to

ensure that the cluster boundary is in consonance with the administrative boundaries for

ease of management;

(iv) existence of access roads; and

(v) potential for cultivating high value crops on jhum land. In total the project would cover a

total of 650 villages (69% of all villages in the eight districts with  approximately 137,000 rural

households) – covering a population of 685,000 persons. A saturation  approach will be

followed within each cluster to ensure comprehensive land use planning for the entire  village

landscape.

Village and contact details of the 8 Districts: