ISBN: - 978-93-88936-09-5 New Delhi), Rubber Statistical Bulletin (International Rubber Study Group, Bangkok), Hand Book of Rubber Statistics (All India Rubber Industries Association, Mumbai) and Rubber Asia ( Dhanam Publications, Cochin). The secondary data related to the study are also collected from journals, newspapers, magazines, books, dissertations, e-journals, websites and relevant official records. Adequate information related to rubber plant, methods, preservation, collection of milky rubber, functions of rubber board and process are obtained from renowned books referred from several libraries. Further, news papers such as The New Indian Express, The Hindu Business Line, Daily Thanthi, and The Hindu (Tamil and English) and journals like Rubber Growers Guide, Economic and Political Weekly, Southern Economist, Kissan World, Rubber Agro Management Diary, were the other sources of secondary data collected for the present study. The strenuous attempts have been made in collecting reviews of literature pertinent to the study from various dissertations, journals, conference proceedings and reports. 1.17PERIOD OF THE STUDY The field survey was conducted from August 2011 to March 2013. The reference period of the survey was from 2001 to 2015. 1.18SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY: Rubber plantation in India is dominated by smallholdings. Although the State of Kerela continued to dominate in the country’s supply of NR, recent years have seen a gradual shift in favour of Non-traditional regions especially some districts of Karnataka and NorthEastern States. Natural Rubber is available in good quality and hence there is a huge scope for setting up of rubber based industries. Rising demand, steep rise in the price of SR and reduced supply from some previously dominate rubber-producing countries have contributed to a sharp rising trend of the price of NR over the last decade. Unfortunately, in the current year the prices of the NR in India have reduced drastically due to the cheap availability of import rubber. In India, the scope of further area expansion in traditional areas being limited, there has been some effort to extend rubber plantation to non-traditional areas, such as Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Andhra Pradesh in the Southern part and Tripura, Assam and Meghalaya in the North-Eastern part of the country. 1.19CONSTRUCTION OF TOOLS The questionnaire prepared was used in this study. Before preparing the questionnaire, experts were contacted and discussions were done with rubber tappers, producers and marketers. The prepared questionnaire has been tested through the selected sample 27
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