India quakes in the year of the
rats By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's armed forces, which
have been battling insurgents in the northeast for
over six decades, are now engaged with another
enemy - rats.
The rat population in the
northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur - the
two states bordering Myanmar - has witnessed a
massive growth. With rats destroying crops and
devouring grain, the threat of famine looms over
the region. Soldiers deployed in the area to fight
insurgents are being called in to help the
civilian administration tackle the impending
crisis.
"The army was called in to fight
the rat menace in Henglep and Thingat subdivisions
of Churachandpur district in Manipur," Group
Captain R K Das, spokesperson of the Indian army's
Eastern Command was quoted by the Press Trust of
India as saying. "Army personnel also held
educational classes at the affected
subdivisions to teach
villagers how to eradicate rats," Das said.
The explosion in the rat population has
been triggered by the flowering of a certain
species of bamboo (Melocanna baccifera)
that grows mainly in Mizoram but in other
neighboring states as well. Thirty percent of
Mizoram is covered by wild bamboo forests. The
flowering of this bamboo results in millions of
seeds being dropped. Rats devour these seeds. The
high protein content of the seeds is believed to
either dramatically increase fertility rates among
the rats or provide them with the nutrition to
enhance survival rates of the entire litter.
Litters of over a dozen rats survive and within
three months are ready to reproduce themselves.
This has resulted in a major rat population
explosion. Some experts say that the rat
population in Mizoram is perhaps ten times that of
humans in the state.
When the rats are
done with eating the bamboo seeds, they invade the
fields and feast on the farmers' crops. This
results in a shortage of grains, causing famine.
The flowering of the bamboo is a cyclical
phenomenon called mautam (bamboo death in
the Mizo language) that occurs every 48 years or
so. Mautams in 1862 and 1911 were followed
by severe famines in Mizoram.
The impact
of the mautam in 1958-59 did not end with
famine. It redefined Mizo politics, triggered an
insurgency and culminated in a redrawing of
boundaries in the region.
At the time of
the 1958-59 mautam, Mizoram was still a
part of the state of Assam. The administration in
Shillong (then capital of Assam) laughed off the
threat posed by the rats. It failed to grasp the
severity of the famine in the Mizo Hills and the
gravity of the crisis it had triggered.
Activists of the Mizo National Famine
Front (MNFF), which was working among villagers to
provide relief, were enraged by the government's
apathy. They turned to armed struggle against the
Indian state to express that rage.
The
MNFF became the Mizo National Front (MNF) and
spearheaded a secessionist movement. The
insurgency raged for over two decades and ended in
1986 with the signing of a peace accord. The MNF
bid farewell to arms and the federal government
granted full statehood to Mizoram in 1987.
Memories of the 1958 mautam and the
bloody insurgency that ravaged the Mizo Hills
remain alive to date. Mizoram's present Chief
Minister, Zoramthanga, would not have forgotten
the role of mautam in prompting thousands
of Mizos to pick up arms and wage war against the
Indian state. After all, he was one of them.
Zoramthanga was number two in the MNF hierarchy
during the insurgency years.
The flowering
was first noticed in 2005, at Chawngtlai bamboo
forest in the southern district of Champhai.
In anticipation of the mautam and
the rodent invasion, Zoramthanga's government had
adopted comprehensive multi-sectoral program
called Bamboo Flowering and Famine Control Schemes
the preceding year. The five-year program includes
harvesting of bamboo before its flowering and the
diversification of agriculture (growing alternate
crops like ginger and turmeric that rats don't
eat) to secure livelihoods of those whose crops
are likely to be ravaged by the rats.
The
centerpiece of the Mizo government's counter-rat
campaign has been to offer a bounty for rats. Each
rat tail turned in at government collection
centers earns the bounty hunter 2 rupees
(US$0.05).
The reward-for-rat scheme has
been in force for around five years now. In 2006
when the rat invasion gathered momentum, the
government turned up the pressure by stepping up
the implementation of the scheme. In 2006 alone,
200,000 rat tails were deposited with the
government.
Performance on that front was
even better in 2007 with the last three months
alone registering more tails turned in than in the
whole of 2006. According to official records,
Lawngtlai and Aizawl districts had outpaced others
in the race for rats' tails.
The killings
continue. But to little avail, it seems. The rats
continue to soldier on, ravaging crops and
devastating farmers.
The food shortage in
the region is serious. In December 2007, the
Mizoram government declared the southern and
western parts of the state as disaster-affected.
It has alleged that the federal government has
done little to ease the situation. Ordinary Mizos
accuse their politicians and officials of eating
into the relief meant for the masses.
According to a report by ActionAid, an
international development non-governmental
organization, "Conditions of widespread food
shortages and hunger currently prevail in all the
eight districts of Mizoram and there are clear
manifestations of famine beginning to unfold in
several locations. The conditions are most
pronounced in the western and southern areas of
the state notably the districts of Lawngtlai,
Lungei, Saiha and Mamit where crop loss is
estimated to be between 85-95%," the report said.
People are starving in parts of the extreme south
and southwestern areas bordering Myanmar and
Bangladesh. The condition in around 60 villages in
Lawngtlai district is said to "very serious",
according to the report.
While Mizoram is
the epicenter of the rat attack, other areas in
the northeast have been ravaged as well. Parts of
Manipur, Tripura and Assam in India as well as
Myanmar's Chin state are reeling from the rodent
invasion and famine is taking grip here as well.
In Manipur, the Churachandpur and
Tamenglong districts are the hardest hit by the
mautam. The increase in the rat population
here has resulted in food grain production falling
by 87% in Churachandpur. Officials say that since
2007 the situation was no longer "famine-like" but
has become a "full-blown calamity".
The
situation in Manipur and especially in
Churachandpur has the Indian government worried.
It should be.
Manipur is the second most
violence-wracked state in the strife-torn
northeast, after Assam. Describing the situation
in the state, Bibhu Prasad Routray, research
fellow the Institute for Conflict Management in
New Delhi writes:
Activities of about 10,000 cadres of
15 militant groups of varying sizes and
character, compound an endemic collapse of the
administrative machinery, taking Manipur to the
threshold of a failed "state" within the Indian
union. Each of Manipur's nine districts (four in
the valley and five in the hills) has been
affected by the unending militant violence,
severely impacting on the very limited local
capacities for governance, justice
administration, and the provision of minimal
security to citizens. State police sources
indicate that, while almost all the 59 police
stations have been reporting militant violence,
as many as 32 of them have been slotted in the
"high" violence category. And Churachandpur is a
hot-bed of militancy in Manipur.
There
is concern that famine will further fuel anger in
Chaurachandpur and other parts of Manipur,
providing Manipuris yet another reason to be angry
with the Indian state and insurgent outfits with a
steady flow of recruits. Hence the deployment of
security forces to tackle the rat menace.
It appears that the government is
concerned about the influx of refugees from
Myanmar as well. No relief work has been carried
out in Chin areas hit by mautam,
contributing to an exodus of Chins into Mizoram.
"These refugee flows coupled with
Mizoram's own affected population could
precipitate a major internal crisis," points out
Namrata Goswami, associate fellow at the
Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and
Analysis.
There are reports of starvation
from interior villages. Some of these villages are
in remote parts of the state with no roads and
difficult to access. The crisis is only now
beginning to unfold and the worst is still to
come. The full impact of the famine will be felt
later this year, warn officials.
That's
when Mizoram will go to the polls to elect
representatives to its 40-member assembly.
Zoramthanga had better start praying for a Pied
Piper to rescue his party at the polls.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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