Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the cooperation based on mutual-trust, between small and marginal farmers and financiers in banana plantation ventures of Daranggiri. The farmers usually repay the loan once they accrue profit post-production, followed by remaining amount shared in-between as an established norm.

Paper long abstract:

Located at Goalpara district of Assam, India and inhabited mostly by the plain tribes of Rabha, Koch and Garo, this paper attempts at capturing how kinsmen, relatives and village-fellows act as ‘financiers’ to the banana cultivators of Daranggiri, fostering an informal collaboration and pragmatic growth. “This system works best unlike bank-loans, because there is no paper-work required, and all of us could equally prosper”, says a small-scale producer, which certainly over time has enhanced their entrepreneurial skills, productivity and purchasing power. The growth of the site entails its team-effort to ensure a stable market via the ‘middlemen’, who buy their produce at bulk and transport them to the nearby regions. Apart from native-grown varieties of Cheni- Champa, Malbhog, Jahaji; extensive research on hybrid/improved varieties are also carried out by government institutions such as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and as experimentation, G9 tissue-cultured banana plantlets were distributed to the farming community a few years back, to verify its adaptability, growth and market-demand. Today Daranggiri has turned out as a banana epicentre and the reputation it held for its ‘retail banana market’, which is one of Asia’s largest and biggest (The Hindu, 2016) shines, out of years of joint-collaborative effort of research-production-marketing-transportation network. The objective of this paper is to understand this external linkage of overlapping units alongside unravelling how the internal collaboration between actors/financiers/middlemen works. A possible outcome is expected at locating the role of ‘networking’ and potential for collaboration among different actors and institutions in banana fruit production.