Agartala, May 26 : Septuagenarian Kripasadhan Chakma, a landless tribal living in remote Tabidapara of Tripura’s South district is not a worried man today as he is now earning a living from his own rubber garden with the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council coming to his aid.
Tabidapara is a picturesque tribal hamlet on a hill surrounded by forests, hit by acute food crisis and no jobs.
“I only had a hut on khas (government land) land to live on and sometimes worked in other people’s fields. We faced poverty and food scarcity every day. But those days are gone with work available in rubber gardens,” Kripasadhan, a resident of a village under Karbuk block, said.
“Now I work in my own garden and get wages from the tribal council,” he said.
The TTAADC is motivating the hill people to settle down in rubber cultivation. The council has provided each family one hectare of land and paying wages at the rate of Rs 87 per day for developing the garden which would continue for seven years,” said Development Officer of the Council, Ratnajit Debbarma.
Debbarma said, seven years from now the rubber trees would start producing latex which could be sold in markets at a high price and one hectare of land would earn about Rs 5,000 per month which would gradually rise to Rs 12,000 per month.
After twenty five years the rubber trees, numbering about 400, could be sold at Rs 4 lakh, while with an investment of Rs 1,50,000 a new garden could be prepared.
The State Forest department introduced rubber in Tripura as a part of afforestation in 1963. The first rehabilitation scheme for tribal shifting cultivators or ‘jhumias’ began in 1977 and at present over 12,000 families were resettled in different rubber plantation schemes.
PTI
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