In the late afternoon sun, the entire village of Khanpui in Mizoram gathers around the wooden local Primary school shed. Huddled in the chill as winter sets in, they look over the hills at Aizawl, glittering in the distance. It is 100km and a world away from the state capital, separated by miles and miles of devastated crops and dried bamboo forests. A village elder starts praying, “lord, give us the strength to survive this mautam, this famine unleashed on us due to the bamboo flowering.”
In dozens of even more remote villages across Mizoram, no one can ignore the frightening legend of the flowering of the bamboo. They say that when the bamboo flowers once every years, it brings along with it death, destuction and suffering. In the southernmost state of north-east India, that time is now Not a single paddy stalk has been harvested in Khanpui and the rest of Mizoram as well. The flowering of one particular species of bamboo— Melocanna baccfera, locally known as mautak—has set in motion the frightening spiral that happens every 48 years in the state. The bamboo flower brings with it hordes of rodents, hugs and locusts, which multiply after eating the nutritious bamboo fruit. All that is left of carefully tilled, sown and irrigated land are yellow and brown beds of devastated paddy fields.
The 300-odd families in Khanpui brave hunger and starvation together. They share whatever food they have and brave the cold to set mouse traps and kill the moving army of rats that have been eating away all their crops. “They’ve been coming since last year,” says D. Chawngthang. He is 62 and about to begin his night-long vigil killing as many rats as he can, collecting Rs 2 for every dead rat.
The last time the bamboo flowered, in 1959, the famine it caused gave birth to an underground movement that lasted 26 years arid led to the formation of the state of Mizoram itself. This time, the picturesque capital of Aizawl, which houses a third of the state’s 10 lakh people, is quietly going about its business as there are no outward signs of a raging famine in the villages.
But in people’s minds it is as if the struggles of the 1960s have recommenced. The local daily newspaper’ Aizawl Post reports crop destruction and starvation, and most locals believe it is the beginning of another long fight for them against deprivation. So what if it is still to touch the city, the unpleasant memories of the last mautam (bamboo famine) have not gone away.
The phenomenon of the flowering of the bamboo is an ecological freak. About 31 per cent of the total area of
Mizoram is covered with thick bamboo forests, housing 26 species of bamboo. One particular species, the Melocanna baccifera accounts for 90 per cent of the bamboo forests found in the north-eastern state.
Once every 48 years, the bamboo flowers, bears fruit and dries completely to give rise to new plants. The fruit from this plant has a 50 per cent starch content which serves to increase the reproductive capabilities of rats
that feed on it. In the year the bamboo flowers, rats give birth to over a dozen offspring in a month, and within a year the entire rodent population multiplies over a dozen times and begins to eat anything it can find. Usually the rats begin with the rice fields.
Farmers have tried every other kind of crop, from brinjal to soya and even bitter gourd but with little luck against the rats. During the 1959 famine, they had not attacked underground crops such as ginger, turmeric and yam. But this year, they have not only attacked these, but have been found nibbling on bamboo-matted floors inside houses. Experts reckon the rodent population in the state could well be 10 times the human one.
The first signs of the mautam are visible around Khanpui’s destroyed fields. In the last one year, no household has been able to harvest even two tins of rice (one tin holds about 70 kg of paddy and a tin of seed is expected to yield at least 70-100 tins of harvest). “We do not have money even for our daily needs,” says Lalrochunga, a Khanpui local. The state government ran a food-for-work programme only for 10 days in the entire year here, effectively raising the household income up to a mere Rs 1,000.
As early as in 1998, Padmashree C. Rokhuma, also called the “Pied Piper of Aizawl”, had warned the government to institute a scheme to collect rat tails and burn them, hoping that it would act as an incentive for villagers to capture rats. The scheme was discontinued after a few months because the government was not convinced that the mautam was such a serious threat. Now, almost all of Mizoram, and parts of Manipur and Tripura, are reeling under acute food shortages due to crop devastation. Rokhuma’s scheme was renewed only last month, and while he presided over the burning of 20,000 rat-tails in a week—in a month, over four lakh rat-tails have been burnt—he believes it is not enough.
The 90-year-old naturalist and social worker fears the writing is on the wall. The flowering, which started last year, has already dried up in most areas, but its worst effects are now being felt. Rokhuma explains that the rats attack the crops because they don’t have enough bamboo fruit to feast on. his laboratory shed contains six
kinds ofmousetraps and chloroformed samples of varieties of rats, including one dreadful beast that weighs 1 kg. It will take at least three to five years for the rats to die, when they contract liver ailments due to indigestible food. Towards the end, the rats will start eating their own ofkpring. But until then, Mizoram will see no harvest. “The only solution is to kill the rats, and we are late already,” he shakes his head.
For Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga, the implications of the mautam stretch far beyond the sufferings of today. From his residence at MacDonald Hill, Zoramthanga looks out over the hills of his state and says the Centre has been stingy about the distribution of rice to Mizoram.
Dnring the last mautam in 1959, Mizoram was just another district of Assam, and its food shortages were initially ignored by the state government. as exaggerated and local superstition. Worsening conditions led to the formation of the Mizo National Famine Front under Laldenga, one of Mizoram’s biggest heroes. In 1966, the Mizo National Front (MNc) began an underground movement for setting up an independent Mizo nation. The struggle went on for two decades before Mizoram was formed in 1986.
Zoramthanga, Laldenga’s right- hand man, is still proud of his role in the insurgency. In his front hall, the politician of today is captured in a framed photograph as the rebel of yesterday, clad in battle fatigues and carrying an automatic rifle. As insurgent-turned chief minister, he must now pull out all stops to combat the famine. Under the BAPPACOS (Bamboo Flowering and Famine Combat Scheme), he is addressing the issue with improved methods to kill rats and has started a food-for-work programme where an individual can earn up to Rs 100 a day.
But he realises that peaceful dialogue is neither as simple nor as cut and dry as fighting with guns. He has written to the prime minister about what Mizoram needs at this moment in time, “At least 10,000 metric tonne of rice per month. The amount is nothing and we are ready to buy it at the API. (above poverty line) rate. The whole population of Mizoram would fit into one street of Delhi or Kolkata,” he says.
Then comes a warning from the lofty heights of MacDonald Hill which is meant for the power brokers thousands of miles away in Delhi. “If the government of India fails this time, it would give rise to a second insurgency. Even now, 90 per cent of the Mizos want an independent nation.” Zoramthanga’s statement is neither empty rhetoric nor an empty threat. In Mizoram there is a silent but strong faith in the idea of “Zoram”, a separate geographical entity, a new nation that includes Mizoram, parts of Manipur, Tripura and Assam, and even parts of Bangladesh and Burma, which are chiefly occupied by the group of tribes generically known as Mizo and their sister tribes. A paper written by Paul Chonzik, a college lecturer in Aizawl, states that the land of Zoram might never be a reality, but local customs and social practices still bind the region strongly together through social ties. Many houses in Aizawl have a map of Zoram on the walls. According to some reports, certain areas of northern Mizoram and the villages around the Vangai Range in Manipur, which is also experiencing the mautam, want to actually declare independence from the Indian state.
Along the National Highway 150—which is supposed to connect Aizawl with Imphal, the capital of Manipur lie some of the areas which are hardest hit by the famine, where a private outfit called the uri (Mautam Affected areas Upliftment for Tripura, Assam and Manipur) Task Force will be delivering supplies of rice.
The NH-150 is no smooth stretch of tarmac, at best a dirt track with kneedeep mud that runs for miles. The bridge connecting the two states was washed away by floods six years ago, and all that is left is a precarious-looking bridge made of bamboo hanging high over the Barak river. The man behind the mautam Task Force, John L. Pudaite, whose father was a mediator between the MNP and the government before the signing of the peace accord in 1986, says that Mizoram, with its roads, electricity, and a proactive government, is still better off compared to other neighbouring states.
At Tipaimukh, where Mizoram and Manipur meet, the local MLA says that a bag of rice takes three days to reach a village in Manipur, and even then, most of it already is taken away as cuts by several insurgent groups. “I try my best to convince the state government of the condition in these parts,” says the 34-year-old RJD MLA and student leader, Ngursanglur Sanate. Other than an excuse for a road, the only way to travel in these parts is by boat along the Barak river that overlooks the insurgent-occupied Vangai range.
In Manipur, the Churachandpur and Tamenglong districts are the hardest hit by the mautam. Some areas of Churachandpur, like Sartuinek village in the hills, are conventionally inaccessible by road. Getting there includes a two-day-long boat ride and a day-long trek. The residents of the village, which has about 87 families, walk five hours to and fro for a sackful of rice provided by the MAUTAM Task Force. That is the only food they have received for the entire year. “We have not harvested even a tin of rice this year,” says a farmer, who then thinks nothing of offering milk to visitors as a sign of hospitality.
Sanate says that there is a backlog of about 64,600 quintals of rice to be given to the Churachandpur district. The Manipur government has not yet handed out even a kilo. Some of it, he fears, has been siphoned off by insurgent outfits. Rice meant for the famine-struck villages, easily recognisable by their wrapping, cart now be found on sale in the bazaars in Silchar and Agartala. Victims of a peculiar natural scourge and, equally. of a remote central administration, the famine- hit villagers of Mizoram and Manipur offer outsiders their own food almost by reflex.
At the height of the bamboo famine, the brutality of nature has tried to overwhelm the beauty of Mizoram’s landscape. After 48 years, once again the mautam has devastated rice fields, ravaged households and shown up Delhi’s detachment. But once again it has failed to destroy the region’s common humanity.
