Aizawl, Apr 1 : A visit by a five-member team of ActionAid, Centre for Peace and Development and Young Lai Association, has revealed the grim reality of starvation faced by thousands of people across Mizoram belonging to the tribes of Chakma, Lai, Bowm, Burmese and Mara.
The team visited the villages of Chamdur Project-II, Bolisora and Hrutezwal under Bungtlang Development block of Lawngtlai district in southern Mizoram where nearly 10,000 people are facing extreme situations of starvation because of Mautam (bamboo flowering).
People’s food stocks have been depleted, their Jhum fields and kitchen gardens are completely destroyed by the rodents who also have infested their homes and have ruined their belongings. The sudden increase in the rodent numbers is due to the bamboo flowering – a natural phenomenon that occurs once in every 48 years.
The people in these parts depended largely on Jhum cultivation for sustenance and they barely have any other sources of income for purchasing food. But due to the Mautam, their crops planted in 2007 hardly yielded any harvest (maximum yield of 20 kilos of rice per family). Nearly 55 per cent of the population is surviving on roots of yam and banana from the neighbouring jungles.
As the onslaught of the rodents continue without any relief support from the government or from any non governmental agencies – people fear that even these forest reserves will be exhausted in the coming two to three months and they will have to further forage into the jungles for food.
Gulsogi, a 50 year-old Chakma widow from Bolisora village with seven family members, says that “if our family is not supported by relief from the government, we expect starvation which may even lead to death.” Her family like most others in the village has reduced their meals from three a day to just one or two a day.
The total lack of alternative sources of income is another factor aggravating the starvation. Even the NREGS programme has failed to generate enough work (the people have got only 27days of work in 2007-08).
The government’s initiative of ‘BUFFACOS’ – providing Re1 for every rat tail submitted by a villager- has not brought any relief to the people as people in these parts do not even know about such a programme. The Fair Price Shops are still functioning in these villages under the Public Distribution System (PDS) scheme. However, a large population is excluded as they lack the purchasing power to even buy PDS rice. People have resorted to taking food on credit from the fair price shops.
The biggest threat the people face is lack of seeds for the current planting season– March-April. Failure to plant this season will mean that the crises extends to 2009 creating a near famine situation unless the government and civil society organizations respond without delay to provide relief to the villagers.
The situation is worse in the inaccessible southern areas of Mizoram bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. Lawngtlai and Saiha are two of the worst affected districts. There are reports of onset of blindness among some due to poor nutrition. One fall out of the crisis is that children are dropping out of school. Even in villages neighbouring the capital Aizwal, the situation is grim.
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