Pankaj Roy^1,, Rintu Sarkar¹

Livelihood generation is one of the major potentials of sericulture and silk industry. Sericulture with its high employment potentiality and more income generation in the households itself has been identified as one of the major sources of rural development by empowering women through the financial self-dependent. Men and women have been contributing in all the stages starting from on-farm activities such as Mulberry plantation, indoor rearing of silk worm, feeding the silk worm, processing the cocoons etc. to off-farm activities. This takes one to inspect the proportion of labour in the total labour absorption in the process of sericulture operation to maintain the balance between input and output. Present study has investigated the rate of work participation between men and women in different age groups and earning from sericulture as a livelihood in the Alomtola village of Kaliachak-II Block of Malda District. A structured schedule was designed based on existing literature and used as an instrument for data collection. Collected data had been analysed using standard statistical methods and final conclusion was drawn based on it. Over all work participation rate in sericulture by male workers is 76.15% while the female workers is 84.51%. Exceptionally the difference between male and female participation in the age group bellow 14 years is higher (26.22%) than the any other age groups. But the difference in participation rate between male and female is below 20 in all the age group of 14-19, 19-30 and above 30 years. In case of income generation from sericulture production, most of the households earn 5,000- 15,000 in a particular season leading to an annual income of 20,000 to 60,000.

sericulture, livelihood, income, women empowerment, rural development, Malda District