The Hindu Business Line : The foreign hand in Agartala

A farmer in South Tripura district inspecting the high yield paddy crop cultivated under the System of Rice Intensifying method initiated by the Department of Agriculture of Tripura. — A. Roy Chowdhury

Hrishyamukh bloc, south Tripura

RUPAN Chowdhury is a B.A. in Bengali and has a diploma in computers. His two brothers are also graduates. His home has a touch of cement, owns a motorcycle and admits to earning a net income of Rs 60,000 per annum after taking out domestic expenses.

He was in a lungi, wound up to his knee, in his rice farm trying to catch fish bred in the waters of the standing rice crop. "I do not use pesticides or insecticides," Rupan told us and that is a strong point in Tripura. On 1.2 hectare of land he is growing rice adopting the SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method introduced in Tripura last year.

Pulak Chaudhuri, Assistant Director of agriculture, is proud over the way the farmers have taken to SRI though results in the current year may not be the best indicator. In Government and private testing plots in south Tripura, the SRI system has been seeded. Some 8-12 days rice seedlings are transplanted with the root system in tact with the spacing wider at 25-30 cm against the normal 15 cm; complete tillering takes about 60 days with each plant having 60 to 80 tillers; rice yields are reported to be higher at seven to eight tonnes per hectare against the normal 3-4 tonnes.

The Tripura Government buys SRI seeds from private farms at Rs 10 per kg (Rs 8 for cost plus Rs 2 as bonus) and sells it to growers at Rs 14 per kg; the entire output is not lifted with private parties buying seeds at Rs 7 per kg.

Some farmers felt the Government should buy the entire production at a higher price to cover rising costs. One kg of seeds yields 80 kg of paddy earning Rs 6-7 per kg, while rice earns Rs 10-12 per kg; one kg of paddy gives 650-700 gm of rice.

By 2010, the Tripura Government wants to be self sufficient in rice. At present, Tripura imports rice, eggs and fish from Andhra Pradesh through Guwahati. The SRI idea got firmed up in early 1980s by Fr. Henri de Laulanie, S.J., who came to Madagascar from France in 1961 and spent the last 34 years of his life working with Malagasy farmers to improve their agricultural systems, particularly rice, their staple food.

A manual prepared by the agriculture department of Tripura Government says, in 1994, an NGO named Association Tefy Saina, began working with the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) in Ithaca, New York, to help farmers living around Ranomafana National Park find alternatives to `slash and burn' agriculture.

SRI helped to grow more rice in the irrigated lowland area — from two tonnes per hectare to over eight tonnes per hectare.

There is the experiment of growing potatoes with seeds as seed tuber is not available in North-East India with technical know-how coming from International Potato Institute, Lima, Peru, and Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla, said Pulak Chaudhuri.

Going about Tripura, one wondered whether agriculture can absorb the young men and women passing out of schools and colleges though Tripura does not have an agricultural college or an agriculture university. All the Government officials we talked to had studied in farm institutions based in Orissa, Kerala and other States.

"The young are migrating to Shillong, Kolkata or farther away as there is no industry or agri-processing units; the males can get out more easily than females.

"There is not a cinema theatre in Tripura with the last in Agartala marked down for a mall. Piracy is normal. One is not so sure of the future," confided a perceptive government official, and added, "Yes, we are planning for higher production but what is the next step. The young have nothing to look for. In a way, we (including the entire North-East) could be supplying the next batch of bhaiyas to various cities; at present, the lone alternative is to get into smuggling and the Bangladeshi market in Agartala is the best evidence."

We (A. Roy Chowdhury and I) visited the market in Agartala manned by youngsters selling every item on earth brought in from Bangladesh. Some tough bargaining and one can purchase jackets to jams. Travelling in north Tripura (Tripura is locked in by Bangladesh in the north, west and south with the east jutting into Mizoram and Assam) a local told us if all (or at least a part) the money over the last many years for tribal development had been utilised the North-East could have been a better place.

Officials say 63 per cent of the population is below the BPL (income below Rs 11,000 per annum), which is hard to digest. Apparently, it is a political number game to bag easy funds from the Centre.

In 2003, Tripura Government did a survey based on 13 parameters with four marks for each parameter. The number of BPL families dropped and an NGO challenged it in the Supreme Court and got a stay order on State governments deciding on the number of BPL families.

On an evening in a chat with some publishers based in Tripura, one got the impression that the reference point for any activity in Tripura is Kolkata and Bangladesh in that order.

"There is enough money in Agartala. Five years ago, there were a few cars and today there are traffic jams. It is the ambition of most Bengalis to build a home in Kolkata; well-off tribals prefer Shillong or Mizoram. An official posted outside Agartala wants to somehow come back to town," said a citizen in Agartala.

For the Tripura Government, its citizens may seem to be doing fine. It can also argue that it is working hard. If the citizens think they are crawling in a dark sink, they may not be entirely wrong.

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