Reality Bites

For use on Sunday night/ edition dated 6/11/06

The buzz in the state has been over iron ore and new steel plants and not much time has been spared for the modest bamboo.

I must confess my ignorance of what this fast-growing flowering plant can do for the economy till I arrived at Tripura Bhavan in Calcutta recently for a brief meeting with Jugnu Shardey.

Jugnu, a bohemian, an amazing wordsmith and wildlife conservation enthusiast, was on his way back from Agartala, where he went as secretary of the conservation committee set up in Bihar.

Like a conjuror he produced from his bag a corrugated sheet and a few tiles of various shapes and sizes and smiled triumphantly at me.

Mystified, I shrugged and rolled my eyes, till he solemnly declared that they were all made of the modest bamboo. He had more to show. I had no clue how versatile bamboo is till he showed me on his laptop a fashion show, held in Shillong last year as part of Bamfest (yes, a bamboo festival promoted by the North Eastern Council). All the ladies on the ramp, I was told, wore clothes made of, yes, bamboo. With his eyes twinkling, Jugnu told me that what Tripura had done was impressive but, God willing, the first few industrial units manufacturing bamboo products would be coming up in Bihar.

I did a little “search” of my own and discovered that Jharkhand has little locational advantage as websites on bamboo make little or no mention of the state.

The northeast, the southern states and Maharashtra seem to produce the majority of the nation’s requirement of bamboo. But its cultivation is still unorganised and industrial units using it are very few. Out of the 16 species of bamboo that can be commercially exploited in India, only a couple of them grow in Jharkhand. And although the state does have a centrally-sponsored plan to develop bamboo farms and promote its commercial use, there is little or nothing in the media to suggest that the land of forests is awake to the potential.

Bamboo pickles, I knew, are of course popular among some people in the state. But what I did not know is that bamboo shoots —fresh, dried or packed — are used to prepare salad, soup, masala curry, keema and even halwa, that is if the website of the National Mission on Bamboo Applications is to be believed.

I would rather take their word at face value when the Mission states that bamboo shoots are source of nutritious but low-fat and vitamin-rich food. It would appear that systematic promotion of bamboo farms in the countryside and processing units put up there could go a long way towards ensuring food security in the villages.

Bamboo is being used increasingly in rural housing as well. A dwelling unit comprising a multipurpose hall, kitchen, verandah and a bathroom was built at Wardha at a cost of Rs 60,000. Pre-fabricated bamboo structurals have been used to build various public utilities in the countryside and, at a higher cost, it is possible to use bamboo for high-end uses like tourist resorts and cottages. Finally, bamboo can be used to produce a range of products like fishing rods and pole vault poles to tableware, partitions, mats and lamp shades.

The past five years witnessed a quantum jump in the annual budget plan of the state’s forest department. Whereas only Rs 4 crore were made available to the department for new projects in the year 2000-01, last year the figure was Rs 113 crore and this year it has gone up to Rs 132.9 crore. So, funds are no longer a constraint, where approximately 30 per cent of the area is said to be covered by forests. Tribals in the state have also the skill to use bamboo.

But there is nothing to suggest that the state is promoting handicrafts or supporting craftsmen. Although tribals traditionally use cane and bamboo to weave fishing nets, hunting rods, baskets and containers, they do not have the training to improve the finishing or add more value to bamboo.

As a result, even indifferent lamp shades found in the shops of Ranchi, shopkeepers confide, are made in Tripura, Bengal or Tamil Nadu. There is another lesson from Bihar that Jharkhand can learn. The parent state has apparently initiated a scheme under which farmers are being offered cash incentives for every tree that they plant and help grow to a particular height.

The forest department spends a fortune every year in afforestation and putting up Gavians, which cost anywhere from Rs 300 to Rs 1,700 for each plant.

Some of it is spent on paper and some of it is siphoned off. And yet the survival rate of plants remains low. The state is now trying to spend this money by directly giving it to farmers and school children. If they plant a tree, they receive Rs 50. If it survives for a year, they receive Rs 100 for each plant. Till the fifth or the sixth year, they can be paid at the same or at enhanced rates. By then the trees would grow tall enough to survive on their own.

The beauty of the plant lies in its simplicity. But there is still a catch and it was explained well by Jugnu himself. “If leaders are corrupt, people can change them,” he said, “but what can you do when people themselves turn corrupt?”