Acorus calamus is perennial medicinal herb is commonly growing on the banks of streams and in dampy marshy places in Kashmir valley. In Ayurvedic medicine Acorus calamus is an important herb and is valued as a "rejuvenator" for the brain and nervous system and as a remedy for digestive disorders. The rhizome of Acorus calamus is used for various medicinal purpose mainly appetite, fever, stomach cramps, tooth ache. The present study investigated the collection, consumption and sale of Acorus calamus and its contribution to household income and employment besides analyzing the factors influencing the Acorus calamus exploitation in the locality using Ex-Post-Facto Research Design. Purposive sampling technique was employed in the area of study (district Ganderbal). The livelihood security from Acorus calamus depends on multitude of household socioeconomic and biophysical factors like education, size of family, size of land holding, herd size, main occupation, family labour and gross annual income, Of the all off-farm and on-farm income sources The total average collection/household/annum of Acorus calamus was 67.3 kg, from which total average 61.7 kgs, were processed, average 5.1 kgs were consumed by per family house hold and it provided total average employment of 68.66 man days to the single sample household The Acorus based cottage industry was found the 5th major constituent of household income employment in the study site. The household characteristics influencing the Acorus calamus livelihood in the locality averaged for the sample population indicated the respondents (74.33%) were old aged followed by middle (24.33%) age groups respectively. The mean age was 72.16, among these (26.66%) were illiterate followed by below primary (20.00%), primary (18.33%) The mean score of education was 2.1 which indicated that low literacy dominates in the surveyed population. The number of large farmers was nil (0.00%) with average score of landholding as 1.45 which indicated the prevalence of marginal landholders among the sample households.

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