MAUTAAM

By Syed Zarir Hussain

Aizawl, Aug 18 (IANS) From one of the most violent states to an oasis of peace, tiny Mizoram, almost unnoticed by the rest of India, has scripted a happy story in a problem-ridden northeast with the transformation riding on people’s zeal for change and development.

“We are fortunate to be a peaceful state and this is primarily because of the comprehensive socio-economic development measures executed sincerely by the government,” Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla told IANS.

Separatist insurgency in the northeast first started after the Mautam famine in 1958-59, with guerrilla leader Laldenga forming the Mizo Famine Front, which finally led to the formation of the Mizo National Front (MNF), one of India’s most organised rebel armies.

The MNF waged a violent bush war for over 20 years against the Indian state for secession before signing a peace accord with New Delhi in 1986 during the adminstration of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

“Undoubtedly Mizoram is now the most peaceful state in the whole of the northeast. The government, church, civil society, and youth groups played a major role in the transformation,” said T. Sailo, a community elder.

The predominantly Christian state of a little under 900,000 people is the second highest literate state after Kerala with a literacy rate of about 89 percent.

“The high literacy rate is another factor contributing to the overall transformation – people by and large realised that insurgency and violence would lead us to nowhere; hence the change in mindset for peace and stability,” Zaaithanchungi, a well-known writer, told IANS.

“Whether we accept it or not, the mindset of the people of Mizoram has changed and that is one of the reasons why no insurgency group is able to take root in the state after the MNF came overground,” said Lalinpui, a young doctor.

Mizoram may not have big industries – but economically the state is growing, with the per capita net state domestic product at current prices pegged at Rs.29,576.

“Development is the cornerstone for peace and stability and we believe despite not much industrial growth, Mizoram is on the road to progress, with people behind the government, whether it is the Congress or the MNF. We support any government’s constructive plans,” said Sanzuwala, a youth leader.

While Mizoram does not have any separatist group now, the other northeastern states are considered a hotbed of militancy with more than 30 rebel armies active in the region and demands ranging from secession to greater autonomy.

Former chief minister and MNF second-in-command Zoramthanga was among the best sharpshooters during the insurgency. He is today better known for his role as a peacemaker in the region, having opened channels of communication with at least five different rebel groups in the northeast.

However, he adds: “There is a feeling among people that the only language New Delhi listens to is that of rebellion and so there is this language of revolt in the region. For decades New Delhi treated the northeastern states rather shabbily and this resulted in a sense of frustration among the people. This, in turn, bred insurgency.”

But he does not talk of guns and violence any more.

“By and large, almost all the underground groups in the northeast are beginning to realise the necessity of solving their various grievances through peace talks and not through the barrel of the gun,” the former chief minister said. Zoramthanga ruled Mizoram for 10 years, but his party, MNF, was routed by the Congress in 2008.

(Zarir Hussain can be contacted at zarir.h@ians.in)

Source: Sindhtoday.net

13 August 2010:* Villagers in Zokhua area of Hakha Township face a fresh challenge of rat infestation that has brought serious damage to their crops and cultivations, according to a report released yesterday by CAD (Country Agency for Rural Development) .
The report said 66,675 tins of corn and 2,337 tins for millet have been completely destroyed by a plague of rats in three villages such as Malsawm, Tinam and Zokhua. The villagers have lost 82% of their corns and 72% of millet only in Malsawm of Hakha Township.

“All corns and millets are severely eaten and destroyed by rats and the most difficult period is expected to be from September 2010 to July 2011 when existing stocks will run out and new crops will not yet be harvested. The food gap will have been prolonged due to the rapid multiplication of rats and their destruction of food crops,” stressed the CAD report.
[image: crops%20destroyed% 20by%20rats2. jpg]

Other villages, the report continued, have also been severely affected by the rat infestation.

Sources confirmed that food crisis caused by bamboo-and-rat- related mautam
still continues in Southern Chin State, affecting villagers in the remote areas of bamboo-covered jungles.

As many as 200 villages were affected by severe food shortages associated with the bamboo flowering, and no less than 100,000 people, or 20 percent of the entire population of Chin State, were in need of immediate food aid according to a CHRO’s report *On the Edge of Survival: The Continuing Rat Infestation and Food Crisis in Chin State, Burma* published in September 2009.

Since 2007, Chin people have been facing severe food crisis, locally called mautam, caused by a once-in-fifty- year phenomenon in which bamboo flowers, bears fruits and dies consequently, which is followed by an influx of rats that destroy crops, fields and food storages.

In the wake of mautam-caused food crisis in Burma’s Chin State, CAD has been actively involved in responding to alleviate the effects and helping those victims suffering from starvation.

The Country Agency for Rural Development <http://www.cadmm. org/index. html>(CAD), a local non-governmental organization founded on 6 May 2004, has been
working for remote villagers in 3 townships (Hakha, Matupi and Thangtlang) in the central part of Chin state and Monhla village in Ye Oo township of Sagaing division.

Source: http://www.chinlandguardian.com/news-2009/1000-cad-rat-infestation-still-hits-chin-villages.html

By Sandar Lwin
July 26 - August 1, 2010

A resident of Wingabaw village points at a stand of dead bamboo. Pic: Sandar Lwin

AS swarmed of rats gushed out of the jungle and stormed through Bago and Daik-u townships last month, residents were filled with a mixture of disgust and excitement.

It was a rodent stampede on a scale that astounded even older residents of the affected villages and left behind ravaged fields, roads littered with rat corpses and stunned communities – who are still enthusiastically exchanging stories of the incident.

Along the Yangon-Nay Pyi Taw highway, in Wingabaw, Sitpinsate, Bawnatkyee and Bawni villages, snatches of conversation caught in tea shops and grocery stores earlier this month revealed a variety of reactions.

“They have their leader. A flock of 40 to 50 rats follow the head rat like ducklings,” recalled a boy living beside the highway near Sitpinsate village. His father added: “When I heard sounds like ‘wayaww yaw yaw’ and ‘shokeshoke shokeshoke’ in the fields around my house, I flashed the torch to see what was happening. It was about 9:30pm. The rats were making a mess of everything, both around my house and on the highway.”
At that time, the whole road was red with the dead bodies of rats, though the rain has now washed them away. They died because the cars ran over them and also the villagers beat them.”

A young boy from a fishing family living beside Bawni dam said the rats would cluster in the trees “like a cane ball”.
“When the rats in the trees saw a villager, they would cling onto each other,” he said.

Most people interviewed said they just watched on in amazement as the rats swarmed across their fields.
“The senior villagers can’t explain it. They haven’t ever experienced an incident like this,” said a man in a teashop in Bawni.

“Of course we were scared, we hadn’t seen anything like it before,” said a woman buying goods at a grocery story in Sitpinsate.

“I prayed for the nat spirits to save our fields. That’s why the rats did not stay in our fields for long. They moved to other places after two or three days,” said a woman in Wingabaw.

Most people in townships were left unperturbed by the scurry of rodents.

“The rats didn’t disturb us too much because mostly they didn’t enter the villages. They mainly went to the fields. Since they go out only at night, we couldn’t find them during the daytime, so the children were not startled either,” said a shopkeeper in Bawnatkyee.

But the question on almost every villager’s lips is simply: “Why did this happen?”

One possible answer may be found in bamboo flowers. The Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation last week issued a “rat control measure alert”, published in state-run media, warning of “the high reproductive rate of the rats relating to bamboo flowering and fruit shedding” in the early monsoon period.

“The subsequent food shortage problem of the hills can lead the rats which live in the hills to migrate to the lowlands where rice and other crop fields exist and eat the seeds and destroy the seedlings,” the notice said.

The notice did not say where the bamboo flowering was taking place but in areas of Bago township The Myanmar Times encountered evidence of dead bamboo. Flowering normally occurs at the end of the bamboo’s life cycle.

Some species of bamboo only flower after extensive periods of dormancy that can last up to 130 years – but when they do eventually flower, the rodent population surges.

Source:www.mmtimes.com

H. CHISHI

Danger

Kohima, July 17: En masse bamboo flowering, which occurs once in every 50 years, has left lush green bamboo forests barren in different parts of Nagaland’s Mokokchung district, even as the state prepares to host a bamboo festival in September.

The phenomenon of synchronised bamboo flowering in one of the bamboo species — Bambusa pallida, (known as ashi in Ao language) — has affected vast bamboo forests at Changki, Mangmetong, Debuia and Lirmen.

Elderly people with considerable knowledge of this unusual occurrence of synchronised bamboo flowering and seeding said this particular bamboo species had last flowered in 1962.

While Tzürangkong, Japukong, Changkikong and parts of Ongpangkong subdivision are witnessing massive flowering and seeding, gregarious bamboo flowering of ashi is yet to occur in other parts of the district.

Sources said not a single bamboo shoot sprouted from ashi last year, thus sending a clear signal that time has come for the phenomenon of synchronised flowering of the species to occur.

They said bamboo flowering en masse leads to famine (mautam) and sickness as people experienced in the past
in different parts of the district when ashi had last flowered.

In 1962, flowering of ashi took place in the district, resulting in a population explosion of rats and other insects and destroying standing crop in the fields, which, in turn, led to a famine. In many villages, it is said, people relied on wild yam and forest tubers as an alternative to rice. However, the famine experienced in the district was not as severe as the one in Mizoram in 1958-59.

The shedding of leaf in the bamboo species, a precursor to the flowering, started after the rainy season last year. By February this year,clumps of ashi transformed into a huge inflorescence and started bearing edible wheat kernel-like seeds and abundantly spread on the floor of the forests leading to attract the seed predators, mostly rats, to feast on them.

One of the unusual things associated with flowering of ashi is that an edible insect (stinkbug), known by Ao people as polo, appeared in many places in the district. In Lirmen, swarms of this insect appeared on a hilltop, known as polo
temen (hill). Similar swarms of the same insect were also found in Debuia and Mongchen villages.

Imtinuchet Ao of Khar village said bamboo seeds which fall on the floor of the forest have started germinating, turning the forest lush green with bamboo seedlings. He said bamboo flowering is always followed by unprecedented increase in the population of animals, particularly rats and also birds. Sources from Debuia village said there has been an increase in the population of jungle fowl following the phenomenon.

The agriculture department has taken steps to keep the rodents under control in almost all the villages in the district.

District agriculture officer, Mokokchung, Bendangtemsu Ao, said there was a report of increase in rat population from Mangmetong, Aliba, Longjang and Sungratsu villages and the department has taken steps to arrest the explosion of rat population by using chemicals and local devices.

 Source:The Telegraph

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OUR CORRESPONDENT

Silchar April 23: Production at a Hindustan Paper Corporation mill at Panchgram in south Assam, 20km from this town, has come to a grinding halt after five senior employees were suspended for alleged malpractice.

A senior official of the PSU at its corporate headquarters in Calcutta yesterday said over phone that at least five high-ups in the marketing and finance departments of the HPC at its Park Street headquarters in Calcutta and its newsprint plant in Kerala were suspended on charges of alleged corruption and flouting of rules while selling its products.

Production stopped on April 11.

Following their suspension in end-March, the five employees jointly challenged it in Calcutta High Court where the case is now pending, the senior official of the legal cell said from Calcutta.

The suspensions followed a change of guard in the upper echelons of the Union heavy industries ministry in which Harbhajan Singh assumed charge as joint secretary. The HPC falls under the ministry.

Singh has initiated a move to clean up the mess in the HPC’s marketing set-up which was allegedly in cahoots with some New Delhi and Guwahati-based wholesalers of papers churned out by the corporation’s mills in Panchgram in Hailakandi and Jagiroad in Nagaon districts.

As a result of this, the marketing cells in the HPC had stopped the initiative to market its products to the paper cartels in the country and abroad, including Bangla-desh, Nepal and Egypt.

The HPC has now an unsold stock of about 7,500 tonnes of paper.

after its headquarters stopped selling the produce as it wants to bring more transparency and flexibility in its sales operations.

The Panchgram paper mill’s production in the last fiscal is likely to slide down to about 65,000 tonnes as there is a shortage of bamboo in Mizoram and Dima Hasao district of Assam, its main source of muli bamboo, because of mautam.

The Panchgram unit of the HPC, which was opened in 1988, needs four lakh tonnes of bamboo as raw material.

In 2006-07, the mill notched up a record production of 103,155 tonnes of finished paper.

The HPC authorities are now thinking of using firewood, craft paper, carton boxes and waste newspaper cuttings as alternative raw materials.

Source: The Telegraph

Mizoram’s bamboos, which are considered as the state’s ‘green gold’, have literally gone down in production during the past five years due to the government’s alleged failure to extract them properly.
The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India for March 30,2009 also slammed the Mizoram government for massive loss of funds due to poor implementation of Bamboo Flowering and Famine Combat Scheme (BAFFACOS) during ‘’Mautam’’ or cyclic flowering of bamboo that hit the state during 2007-2008.
The CAG report said the state government sustained a loss of Rs 226 crore during 2005-08 as it failed in extracting bamboo before gregarious flowering creating conditions for rodent menace and subsequent destruction of crop.
The projected average yield of bamboo in the state was 29.86 lakh MT as per Bamboo Resource Inventory,2002 and against the average annual yield of 29.86 lakh MT bamboo, the state environment and forests department extracted only 2.36 lakh MT bamboo during 2005-06 to 2007-08 and earned revenue of Rs 6.11 crore, the report added.
The poor extraction of bamboo resulted in the loss of Rs 226 crore to the state exchequer, the report said, adding the state environment and forests department neither took any effort to regenerate bamboo in the affected areas nor took any action was taken to raise the plantations of new species having different flowering cycles to avoid negative effects of flowering.
The report also said the state government incurred expenditure of Rs 29.65 lakh as bounty payment for purchase of 15.10 lakh rat tails during 2006-07. However, the rodents continued to damage jhum paddy, vegetables, fruit and rice cultivation in low-lying areas to the tune of almost 82.88 per cent of cropping areas in the state.
Even after spending Rs 29.65 lakh, the state government could not control the rodent menace effectively, the report added.
The CAG report added that different departments which utilised the BAFFACOS fund diverted and misused the allocations to the tune of Rs 23.08 crore by using it for some other purposes having no link with combating the rodent menace and mitigating the sufferings of farmers in the state.
According to Mizoram Remote Sensing Application Centre, the bamboo forest covers an area of 6708.37 sqkm, which is 31.81 per cent of the total geographical area of Mizoram.
Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla has stated in the recent budget session that the mahaldari on bamboo had been suspended in order to stop the huge loss and properly tap the resources.
‘’Our bamboo resources have attracted interest from several countries. Vast amount of bamboo resources have been stolen under the mahaldari system. Therefore, we have suspended the mahaldari for bamboo and broomsticks for a more sustainable and profitable system of commercialising our forest resources,’’ the Chief Minister had said.

Source: NAGALANDPOST

1 February 2010 – Hollywood, FL (Chinland Guardian): The last of a series of Chin Food Aid Concert in the US was last Friday successfully concluded in Hollywood, Florida where hundreds supported the historic humanitarian event.

In the concluding performance for the Chin Food Aid concert in USA, Sung Tin Par, a unique artist and one of the top performers from Burma was joined by well-known artists Lashio Thein Aung, Htut Aelin, Kabia Bwe Moo, and Mee Mee Khae.

“I’m honored and very proud to be here tonight to take part in helping our Chin brothers and sisters back in Chin State who are in need of help,” said Mee Mee Khea, a Karen performer who attended the Grammy Awards ceremony along with other three Artists from Burma.

Lashio Thein Aung, also known as Jimmy Nathan, for the second time joined the performance in Hollywood. “I want to send a message to our Chin brothers and sisters in Chinland that you are not alone, we will always be there and remember you all the times in our prayer. I’m very happy that I have a chance to perform at this humanitarian event, and I’ll continue to do what I can to help you”, said a 62-year-old performer.

Florida Chin Food Aid Concert

Singers performing at Florida Concert

Florida Chin Food Aid Concert, Hollywood

Singers performing at Chin Food Aid Concert, Florida

In his short speech, Salai Elaisa Vahnie, coordinator of Chin Food Aid Concert in USA, said he is gratefully thankful to each of the performers who have sacrificed their time, energy and used their talents and professionalism to alleviate the sufferings of our Chin people in Chinland, especially to Sung Tin Par who have performed in three continents for the victims of food crisis. He also thanked each one of the supporters who have come to the event to take part in a life-saving mission.

Sung Tin Par was recently awarded the “Humanitarian Goodwill Ambassador for the Chins” by the Global Campaign Against Starvation in Chin State in USA.

When asked why it was needed to organize these events, the Co-ordinator said: “It is very simple. When a dreadful famine-like situation hit our Chin people in Chinland, which has been badly affecting about 100,000 people, we all were fearful and helpless. This is a meaningful response to that call, a compelling call upon us to act. And this is something we can do. We must do what we can. There is no question about extending our helping hand to our own brothers and sisters back home, which is our own responsibilities. We never doubted that this is what God wants us to do. Thus we do this with a clear understanding of the need, conviction, passion and commitment.”

He continued to answer the questions of whether the campaign is successful by saying: “Of course, the campaign is very successful. Our measurement is based not only on monetary terms, but also on the awareness and the foundation that it has laid for the international lobby in view of a longer-term perspective. Perhaps, one of the most important achievements of this campaign is that as we have always emphasized the need for inclusiveness and joint effort, we have evidently proved today that we, the Chin people despite being diverse groups, can come together and work together to achieve our common goals.

When asked if the campaign is over, he remarked: “As we have always said, this is just the beginning. The concert, which is just one part of a broader and larger campaign [the Global Campaign Against Starvation in Chin State], will be over for now. However, we will continue to do what we can and continue to seek both the Burmese and the international community’s help. We clearly understand the need to change the way the Chin people in Chinland make their livelihood, which is no longer compatible with the 21st century way of living anywhere in the world.  We therefore will continue to work for the alternative livelihood of our Chin people in Chinland.”

The Chin Food Aid Concert in Hollywood, FL was organised and held in partnership with the United Nationals Organization of Burma (USA) and Zomi Innkuan, Florida.

Chinland Guardian

26 January 2010 (Chinland Guardian): The Chin food Aid concert took place successfully in New York City last Sunday with an attendance much bigger than expected.

A diverse group of hundreds of audience supported the event where one of the top performers from Burma Sung Tin Par was joined by New York based talented singers Mr. Zaw Htay, Ms. Nau Nau, and Ms. Katie.

The famous Chin singer said: “I have come here to New York City so far away from Chinland to entertain you tonight.” The audience greeted the artist and chanted: “We love you, Ma Sung Tin”.

“When we do what we do, we do it with a clear understanding of the need, and with conviction, passion and commitment”, said Salai Elaisa Vahnie, coordinator of Chin Food Aid Concerts in USA, in his short speech at the event.

In response to the call, generated by famine-like food crisis in western Burma, which has affected the estimated 100,000 individuals since 2007, the awareness and fund raising concerts have been organized in four continents as part of the Global Campaign Against Starvation in Chinland.

The humanitarian event was supported by New York based Burmese community as well as supporters from Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland and other cities in New York state. Some officials from the United Nations also attended the concert.

The Third Media (3M) [for Orphans of Burma] helped organize this concert in New York City.

The next concert is slated to be organized in West Palm Beach, Florida on 29 January 2010, Friday evening.

Source: Chinlandguardian