Brief history of the District

The district, having a geographical area of 1628 sq. kms., is inhabited by the Lothas. It is the third smallest district in terms of area of the State. As per the provisional population total, Census of India, 2001, the population of the district is 1,61,098 and the population density as per the 1991 census is 51 person persons per sq. km.

The soil is generally good. Save Lakhuti region where where a considerable area is rocky and barren. The rainfall is adequate for cultivation in the entire area of the Wokha district. Wokha district is noted for good production of a variety of vegetables and fruits almost through out the year. Encouragement should be given for improvement of Horticulture in the district.

There is ample scope to develop terrace Rice cultivation in the hilly regions and wet cultivations in the foot hill belt for production of paddy. As good number of fore sighted people have developed permanent cultivation (Terrace Rice Cultivation and Wet Rice Cultivation). However, even now a large number of population in the district indulge in the old system of shifting Jhum Cultivation, thereby the ecological balance is being disturbed. A great deal of motivation and encouragement will be needed to change the habit of the people to adopt TRC/WRD depending on the suitability of the land and availability of the water. There are many villages willing to adopt permanent cultivation, however we are faced with certain intractable problems in this respect.

The entire district is classified as rural, having 107 recognised villages with VDB, except for the district Hq., Wokha Town , which is classified as Urban. There are two small Township called Baghty and Bhandari. The system of land tenure is divided into three categories :

Village Land which is owned by the village, khel land possessed by a khel of a particular clan, and the most important is family land, which is passed from father to son and so on. Agriculture predominate the people, and over 75 % of the total population are cultivators/farmers. The most common practice of agriculture is jhum-shifting cultivation. Though, potentiality of agriculture is ample, the people are hard working, creative and thrifty, the district is not self-sufficient in food grains as the farmers do not take up cultivation on a large scale basis, and application of modern advance technologies is not viable due to the reasons which are as follows :-

·        Most of the cultivated lands are steep sloped marginal land.

·        The land holdings of the cultivation are fragmented and scattered.

·        Most of the agriculture are mixed and single season cropping, consequently the yield per unit of area is low.

·        Also the deplorable inadequacy of link roads, to the steep terrain lands and hill ranges, the vast inaccessible agriculture area can not be put to full utilization for lack of all infrastructure facilities.

·        Cultivation is done with the help of spade, hoe and scrapes and not plough, as the region is hilly. Only in the valley of Doyang , Baghty and Merapani bullock drawn plough is used and practiced.