14th May 2014 - Link
This article is important as it has a mix of Environment & Biodiversity, Culture, Agricultural geography and Polity,
all of these topics are really important from prelims as well as mains point of view.
Bamboo dances of Mizoram
Two spectacular bamboo dances, one celebrated, the other reviled, enliven the mountains of Mizoram.
Cheraw:
In the colourful Cheraw, Mizo girls dance as boys clap bamboo culms at their feet during the annual Chapchar Kut festival.
Jhum:
The festival itself is linked to the other dance: the dance of the bamboos on Mizoram’s mountains brought about by the practice of shifting agriculture, locally called jhum or ‘lo.’
In jhum, bamboo forests are cut, burnt, cultivated, and then rested and regenerated for several years until the next round of cultivation, making bamboos vanish and return on the slopes in a cyclic ecological dance of field and fallow.
While Cheraw is cherished by all, jhum is actively discouraged by the State and the agri-horticulture bureaucracy.
Organic Jhum Cultivation
Jhum uses natural cycles of forest regeneration to grow diverse crops without using chemical pesticides or fertilisers.
Process of Jhum:
1.Early in the year, farmers cut demarcated patches of bamboo forests and let the vegetation sun-dry for
weeks.
2.They then burn the slash in contained fires in March to clear the fields(that are one to three hectares in area), nourish the soil with ashes, and cultivate through the monsoon.
3.Each farmer plants and sequentially harvests between 15 to 25 crops.
4.After cultivation, they rest their fields and shift to new areas each year.
5.The rested fields rapidly regenerate into forests, including over 10,000 bamboo culms per hectare in five years.
6.After dense forests reappear on the original site, farmers return for cultivation, usually after six to ten years, which forms the jhum cycle.
Benefits of Jhum:
New Land Use Policy(NLUP)
The State’s NLUP
Reasons for this policy:
What should be done instead?
Today, the Unless a more enlightened government reforms future policies in favour of shifting agriculture, Mizoram’s natural bounty of bamboos is at risk of being frittered away.
This article is important as it has a mix of Environment & Biodiversity, Culture, Agricultural geography and Polity,
all of these topics are really important from prelims as well as mains point of view.
Bamboo dances of Mizoram
Two spectacular bamboo dances, one celebrated, the other reviled, enliven the mountains of Mizoram.
Cheraw:
In the colourful Cheraw, Mizo girls dance as boys clap bamboo culms at their feet during the annual Chapchar Kut festival.
Jhum:
The festival itself is linked to the other dance: the dance of the bamboos on Mizoram’s mountains brought about by the practice of shifting agriculture, locally called jhum or ‘lo.’
In jhum, bamboo forests are cut, burnt, cultivated, and then rested and regenerated for several years until the next round of cultivation, making bamboos vanish and return on the slopes in a cyclic ecological dance of field and fallow.
While Cheraw is cherished by all, jhum is actively discouraged by the State and the agri-horticulture bureaucracy.
Organic Jhum Cultivation
Jhum uses natural cycles of forest regeneration to grow diverse crops without using chemical pesticides or fertilisers.
Process of Jhum:
1.Early in the year, farmers cut demarcated patches of bamboo forests and let the vegetation sun-dry for
weeks.
2.They then burn the slash in contained fires in March to clear the fields(that are one to three hectares in area), nourish the soil with ashes, and cultivate through the monsoon.
3.Each farmer plants and sequentially harvests between 15 to 25 crops.
4.After cultivation, they rest their fields and shift to new areas each year.
5.The rested fields rapidly regenerate into forests, including over 10,000 bamboo culms per hectare in five years.
6.After dense forests reappear on the original site, farmers return for cultivation, usually after six to ten years, which forms the jhum cycle.
Benefits of Jhum:
- Regenerating fields and forests in the jhum landscape provide resources for many years.
- The farmer obtains firewood, charcoal, wild vegetables and fruits, wood and bamboo for house construction and other home needs.
- Prof. P. Ramakrishnan at Jawaharlal Nehru University, “economically productive and ecologically sustainable.”
New Land Use Policy(NLUP)
The State’s NLUP
- Deploys over Rs.2,800 crore over a five-year period “to put an end to wasteful shifting cultivation” and replaces it with “permanent and stable trades.”
- Under this policy, the State provides Rs.1,00,000 in a year directly to households, aiming to shift beneficiaries into alternative occupations like horticulture, livestock-rearing, or settled cultivation.
- The policy has created opportunities for families seeking to diversify or enhance income. Still, NLUP’s primary objective — to eradicate “wasteful” shifting cultivation
Reasons for this policy:
- Government Claims: Jhum often concede that jhum was viable in the past, but claim population growth has forced jhum cycles to under five years, allowing insufficient time for forest regrowth, thereby making jhum unsustainable.
- Govt also claims: Plantations, such as pineapple and oil palm, claiming they are better land use than jhum.
- Promoting and subsidising such plantations and corporate business interests undermines both premise and purpose of present land use policies.
- Following the entry of three corporate oil palm companies, over 17,500 hectares have already been permanently deforested within a decade.
- State only supports industry and alternative occupations, leaving both bamboo forests and farmers who wish to continue with jhum in the lurch.
- Oil palm, rubber and horticultural plantations are monocultures that cause permanent deforestation, a fact that the India State of Forest Report 2011 (ISFR).
- Drastically reduces rainforest plant and animal diversity.
- As forest cover and bamboo decline, people in some villages now resort to buying bamboo, once abundant and freely available.
What should be done instead?
- Better use of public money and resources would be to work with cultivators and agroecologists to refine jhum where needed.
- The State can: involve and incentivise communities to foster practices that lengthen cropping and fallow periods, develop village infrastructure and access paths to distant fields, and provide market and price support, and other benefits including organic labelling to jhum cultivators.
Today, the Unless a more enlightened government reforms future policies in favour of shifting agriculture, Mizoram’s natural bounty of bamboos is at risk of being frittered away.
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