The Hindu Business Line : Weaning away Tripura tribals from jhum

YUDDHA Debbarma is a short, 30-year-old Tripuri tribal in a red shirt, green pant and sandals growing Kew pineapples on the hillsides (tilla land) in Baskaracherra, Teliamura agriculture sub-division, Teliamura, West Tripura district.

He is married and has four children, three boys and one girl, studying at schools. He belongs originally to Haludia village practicing jhum cultivation. With extremists making life difficult and jhum (slash and burn) going out of fashion, Yuddha along with a large number of families were relocated in 2004-05 under a Government project and grow pineapples, bananas and lichi.

For lichi, the Government offers a grant of Rs 5,000 per hectare while for Kew pineapples it is Rs 20,500. "It takes three years for a pineapple garden to bear fruits and I find it hard to make a living in that period. I want Rs 1,800 per month from the Government to keep me going. At present, I work as a carpenter, which does not fetch me much and I have no jhum land to cultivate other crops," said Yuddha, one of the few tribal farmers who spoke up.

He admits the Government has given him tin sheets and a grant of Rs 6,000 to build a mud house with a tin roof. As the families have been resettled in the forests, the forest department often threatens to throw them out and if they do, "What happens to us," Yuddha asks.

The families do not have land records to back them and the banks do not give loans in the absence of tenancy rights. It is doubtful living for Yuddha and many others. On one hectare of hill land, Yuddha has planted in double rows 30,000 pineapples. From the third to the sixth year, the pineapple crop should fetch him in the open market about Rs 5 per unit. They are taken in trucks to Guwahati apart from being sold in the local markets with some smuggled into Bangladesh.

Government officials estimate Yuddha should earn a yearly income of Rs 1,50,000 from pineapples.

In another hill sub-division, young Sanjit Riang (Riang community), has planted 500 rubber trees in one hectare of Government land with the assistance of the Rubber Board and has been earning about Rs 3 lakh per year. He seems to be happy with the rubber prices ruling steady; a 600 gm rubber sheet fetches Rs 35. In Bogafa agri sub-division, south Tripura, farmers are experimenting rice-cum-fish farming in the valley with jhum still on in the hills. The run-off water from seven months of rains helps grow rice and fish together in flooded farm plots.

Mr Muralidharan Nair, Deputy Rubber Production Commissioner in charge of West Tripura, Rubber Board, said the total area under rubber in Tripura was .29 lakh hectares making it the second biggest rubber growing state in the country with Kerala at 4.76 lakh hectares heading the league.

"The only viable crop in Tripura is rubber. It provides employment to over 50,000 with the rubber tappers earning between Rs 40 and Rs 60 per day," Mr Nair contends.

Mr Nair, who has been in Agartala for the last six months, said the Board offers a grant of Rs 20,000 per hectare spread over six years to small growers with holdings of less than 20 hectares. The total plantation cost in 2004 came to Rs 70,000 per month with a 10 per cent rise in 2005; rubber productivity per hectare is put at 1,500 kg.

Rubber growers have to make the difference with banks offering loans in some cases at 8 per cent to 12 per cent. At Sabuala village in Jumpui Hills, a state agriculture officer, Mr Zasangzuala, from the Riang community explained that jhum practiced in the hills yielded paddy, chilli, cotton, sesamum and other crops every four years. The tribals were now shifting to plant Kamala oranges, bananas and vegetables.

Seemingly, the Tripura Government wants to wean away tribals from jhum and settle them as farmers as slashing and burning forests is a destructive practice. That wisdom has been challenged by Mr P.S. Ramakrishnan of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in a project report styled "Re-developing Shifting Agriculture (Jhum) in the Hills of Tripura."

The project report is co-authored by Ekalabya Sharma, Ms Elizabeth Kerkhoff and Baharul Islam Majumder with contributions from Dr G.S.G. Ayyangar, Commissioner and Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development and Amar Das, Director of Agriculture, Tripura Government.

Under shifting cultivation or jhum (with the practioners called jhumias), tribals rotate forest land leaving some patches fallow to farm in nearby sites by slashing and burning forests and then go back to the original sites.

"Farmers sustain a mixed cropping system for a year or two, which often involves intercropping with selectively maintained tree species to ensure a successful re-growth of the forest during the fallow phase. When the fertility level goes down and weeds become unmanageable, which happens rather quickly on steep hill slopes, they move to the next site. There the process is repeated while the forest comes back on the previous plot and recovers the soil. When eventually the farmer returns to the same site, the soil's physical properties and fertility status gets recovered through natural process during forest fallow development. Thus jhum is a landscape-level resource management practice with a rotational cycle involving a cropping phase and a forest fallow phase."

Jhum cycles of 60 years have now come down to 5 years when "soil recovery through natural forest regeneration gets stalled." The common belief that high population has put pressure on jhum is not accepted. "External forces including large-scale timber extraction and allocation of land for other purposes have caused rapid deforestation, causing degradation of the hill slopes that were used for jhum," says Mr Ramakrishnan.

The area under jhum has come down from 14,000-15,000 hectares to 10,000 hectares over the years. Jhumias were subsidised to grow rubber on their land and were compensated during the 7-year gestation period when no rubber was produced.

"However, most farmers after these seven years of subsidies returned to their traditional way of farming because it is difficult to conquer a share of the rubber market and the farmers were not convinced of the permanent income security of this Government venture. Other common cash crops, like pineapple and orange orchards, have also been tried with similar results," admits the report.

Now, the Tripura Government is working on re-developing jhum, which is the signature style of tribal life. The report confirms it is not trying to dab tribal life with romance. The project is premised on finding solutions built upon the Traditional Ecological Knowledge available with the local communities.

A Munda tribal folklore poetry goes: "Look, The upland is burning,/ Sisipiri is in flames,/Where shall we eke out our living?/They are burning the half of it,? We shall eke out our living in the other half/Where will you dance?/You will dance in the other part." Will they be able to sing and dance of yore?

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