Aizawl, May 23 : When 29 children die of starvation within two months, it is obvious that the conditions for their starvation could not have been created in a day. It has taken more than two years for the famine in Mizoram to spread and, according to official estimates, 30,000 families are now in crisis and 10,000 are almost starving.
The state is overrun by rats, which appear in hordes when the bamboo begins to flower. They love the bamboo fruit. They eat, multiply and destroy not just the bamboo fruit, but also grain, and all other fruits and crops, devastating fields, granaries and the countryside. The bamboo flowers every 48 years, according to lore; the last mautam or ‘bamboo death’ occurred in 1958-59. This time, the flowering began in late 2005.
Famine was unmistakably prefigured by 2006, yet the government’s efforts have not made much difference. Payment for the tail of each rat killed, first a rupee and now two rupees, has merely cost the government and piled up hundreds of thousands of tails. Mizoram has 9,00,000 farmers, almost half the population. Many have not even planted their crops, knowing they will be devastated. Without their staple, rice, the people are trying to subsist on roots and yams.
Whatever the scale of the ecological disaster, it seems incredible that a famine that takes almost three years to spread could not have been contained. The state government asked for foodgrains from the Centre; it now seems that the alternative supplies have “gone wrong”.
There is a familiar ring to this. The United States of America is now releasing funds that will be administered by Save the Children. That is a multi-national non-governmental organization. Why is it expected that it will be able to do what the Centre cannot? If farmers are now being advised to plant ginger and turmeric, neither of which rats can eat, why was this wisdom not available earlier? The plague of rats could not have been eliminated perhaps, but it is puzzling that it could not have been contained.
Telegraph India
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