ENVIRONMENT: Indian State Plays Pied Piper as Rats Threaten Crops

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Suman K Chakrabarti

AIZAWAL, India, Feb 17 2003 (IPS) - Every 40 years or so, the lush bamboo forests of India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram, which borders Burma, burst into flower, providing a rare spectacle but also triggering off serious food shortages.

What worries the state government as well as tribal elders is that the sudden proliferation of rats that always precedes each ‘mautam’ or bamboo-flowering cycle has already begun.

"We know what is going to happen and we are worried. But we have some time to prepare," said Chief Minister Zoramthanga, who has ordered the government to work out an emergency plan to contain the rodents.

According to the oral tradition of the Mizo tribe, when the bamboo forests flower, the rats multiply and devastate the basic crops, leaving nothing for the farmers.

The last time a the bamboo flowering cycle was underway in the Mizo hills in the early 60s, the infestation of rats caused a severe famine in the region and gave rise to an insurgency led by the Mizo National Front (MNF), which resulted in the creation of the Mizoram state out of a larger Assam and a peace accord in 1986.

As a quick measure, the state government has announced a reward of one Indian rupee (two cents) for every rat tail brought in by villagers.

"We expect to motivate the people to kill at least three million rats over a period of one year," said Aizawl Deputy Commissioner C Ropianga, who is also responsible for drafting the disaster management plan.

Discounting fears that a single rat tail could be re-cycled by several individuals to make money, he said that strict accounts would be maintained while buying the appendages – which are a sure sign that the rodents have indeed died.

Under the proposed plan, the purchase of rat tails is initially to be taken up in the 22 rural development blocks of the state, while ”purchase centres” are to be opened later in Mizoram’s eight civil district headquarters.

Zawlpala, a senior functionary of the Mizoram Farmers Union, recalls that when the famine hit Mizoram 40 years ago, many villagers just died of starvation.

"The havoc created by the rats was terrible and very little grain disappeared. For sustenance, Mizos collected roots and leaves from the jungles,” said the elder from the Phulpui village in Aizawl district

Last time around, when the bamboo groves bloomed, tribal elders said it was a bad omen and sought help from officials in Shillong, the former capital of the large, undivided, Assam state.

But the Assam government did not heed the village elders and as famine gripped the area, thousands of angry Mizos took up weapons to fight what they felt was an indifferent government.

Zoramthanga himself joined the voluntary Mizo National Famine Front (MNNF), formed especially to conduct relief for his hungry tribesmen during the Mautam of the 60s.

As the confrontation with Indian security forces deepened, Zoramthanga went underground and dropped the word ‘famine’ from his organisation to rechristen it the formidable Mizo National Front.

However, by 1986, the MNF and the Indian government, having taught each other a few lessons in better governance and jungle warfare, signed an accord with New Delhi in 1986. Life returned to normal, with Zoramthanga transformed into the new state’s most popular politician.

As another Mautam threatens Mizoram, now a separate state, Zoramthanga cannot take any chances with any famine since he knows well that the blame will fall on him rather than on a distant state administration in Shillong, now capital of Meghalaya state, or the even more distant New Delhi.

”This time we will heed the advice of the village elders,” Zoramthanga told IPS, adding that every cent spent on buying rat tails is going to be worth it.

There are hundreds of species of bamboo in the world. Some flower every year, some at irregular intervals. But some species flower in synchrony, over hundreds of square kilometres, every few decades.

Despite the devastation that follows a ‘mautam’, no serious research has been undertaken to unravel the mystery of synchronised flowering of bamboo groves or the accompanying sudden proliferation of rats.

Sudhir Trivedi and R S Tripathi, from the botany department of the Shillong-based North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), in a study concluded 10 years ago. suggested that the sudden increase in the rodent population due to bamboo-flowering is hypothetical.

They attributed the increase in the rat population, particularly in Mizoram, to the absence of predators feeding on them. According to them, it was the "systematic extermination of wildlife that may be responsible for the disturbance of natural checks and balances in nature to a (great) extent".

"Science has not been able to explain till date how the same message is passed among bamboo clumps separated by hundred of kilometres to flower at the same time," said Dr Ashish Ghosh, former director of the Zoological Society of India.

But he explains that bamboo plants produce a large volume of seeds when they flower. "These seeds are a source of food for many predators, especially rats. As masses of flowering bamboo produce this natural bounty, rats are attracted to the area. Fortified by the protein-rich seeds, they multiply rapidly," he said.

But the supply of bamboo seeds is limited. When it is exhausted, armies of marauding rodents turn their attention to standing crops, devouring acres of rice, potatoes, and sweet potatoes within a few days.

Aichhinga, Mizoram’s agriculture minister, says that one way to avert the cyclical famine associated with bamboo flowering is to teach farmers to plant crops that rats avoid such as ginger and turmeric, during the ‘mautam’ period.

"We have asked our rural development department to help us spread this lesson to the farmers," he said.