File picture of bamboo flowers

Sept. 19: The dreaded mautam has come to be synonymous with hardship and scarcity in most areas of the northeastern region.

After Mizoram, Manipur and Assam’s North Cachar Hills district, it is now the turn of Cachar district to be assailed by the seasonal scourge of bamboo flowering and subsequent famine or mautam, as it was christened in the early sixties.

The blossoming of the mauve and red bamboo flowers, which occurs once in 48 years is a strange ecological phenomenon, inspiring fear among the farming community, as it leads to scarcity of food following the destruction of crops.

It also heralds the slow death of bamboo plants in Assam’s sylvan forests. Fortunately, this time, the Assam government has risen to the occasion on time and sanctioned a grant of Rs 50 lakh in the district to combat this natural aberration.

The district agriculture department officials confirmed that bamboo flowering has been observed in the groves that dot the forests and hill slopes stretching from north to south in the remote hilly areas on Cachar district’s eastern frontier with Manipur.

The district authorities were quite oblivious to the reoccurrence of this periodic phenomenon in Cachar. However, 78-year-old H.K. Luola, village headman of Barawidisa, decided to do something about the matter and laid siege to the local government offices, armed with the bamboo flowers and fruits.

The authorities immediately sent an SOS to Dispur and plunged into damage-control measures in a bid to save the bamboo trees, which are of economic significance to the region as well.

The plants are supplied in large numbers to the public-sector Hindustan Paper Corporation’s Rs 400-crore-plant at Panchgram in adjacent Hailakandi district.

Such sporadic but gregarious sprouting of the bamboo blossoms had been noticed in Cachar in 1964. However, the incident had not taken the shape of a major disaster, as had happened in Mizoram in 1960. “We are thankful to the government that it had woken up to the need to combat this frightful thing. Otherwise, it would have spawned a catastrophe in this district also,” said Luola.

There is always a link between bamboo flowering and food shortage, as rats tend to increase after eating the seeds that are produced after the flowers perish.