India Quakes in the Year of the Rat
Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's armed forces, which have been battling insurgents in the northeast for over six decades, are now engaged with another enemy - rats.
The rat population in the northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur - the two states bordering Myanmar - has witnessed a massive growth. With rats destroying crops and devouring grain, the threat of famine looms over the region. Soldiers deployed in the area to fight insurgents are being called in to help the civilian administration tackle the impending crisis.
"The army was called in to fight the rat menace in Henglep and Thingat subdivisions of Churachandpur district in Manipur," Group Captain R K Das, spokesperson of the Indian army's Eastern Command was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying. "Army personnel also held educational classes at the affected India quakes in the year of the rats
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's armed forces, which have been battling insurgents in the northeast for over six decades, are now engaged with another enemy - rats.
The rat population in the northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur - the two states bordering Myanmar - has witnessed a massive growth. With rats destroying crops and devouring grain, the threat of famine looms over the region. Soldiers deployed in the area to fight insurgents are being called in to help the civilian administration tackle the impending crisis.
"The army was called in to fight the rat menace in Henglep and Thingat subdivisions of Churachandpur district in Manipur," Group Captain R K Das, spokesperson of the Indian army's Eastern Command was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying. "Army personnel also held educational classes at the affected
subdivisions to teach villagers how to eradicate rats," Das said.
The explosion in the rat population has been triggered by the flowering of a certain species of bamboo (Melocanna baccifera) that grows mainly in Mizoram but in other neighboring states as well. Thirty percent of Mizoram is covered by wild bamboo forests.
The flowering of this bamboo results in millions of seeds being dropped. Rats devour these seeds. The high protein content of the seeds is believed to either dramatically increase fertility rates among the rats or provide them with the nutrition to enhance survival rates of the entire litter. Litters of over a dozen rats survive and within three months are ready to reproduce themselves. This has resulted in a major rat population explosion. Some experts say that the rat population in Mizoram is perhaps ten times that of humans in the state.
When the rats are done with eating the bamboo seeds, they invade the fields and feast on the farmers' crops. This results in a shortage of grains, causing famine.
The flowering of the bamboo is a cyclical phenomenon called mautam (bamboo death in the Mizo language) that occurs every 48 years or so. Mautams in 1862 and 1911 were followed by severe famines in Mizoram.
The impact of the mautam in 1958-59 did not end with famine. It redefined Mizo politics, triggered an insurgency and culminated in a redrawing of boundaries in the region.
At the time of the 1958-59 mautam, Mizoram was still a part of the state of Assam. The administration in Shillong (then capital of Assam) laughed off the threat posed by the rats. It failed to grasp the severity of the famine in the Mizo Hills and the gravity of the crisis it had triggered.
Activists of the Mizo National Famine Front (MNFF), which was working among villagers to provide relief, were enraged by the government's apathy. They turned to armed struggle against the Indian state to express that rage.
The MNFF became the Mizo National Front (MNF) and spearheaded a secessionist movement. The insurgency raged for over two decades and ended in 1986 with the signing of a peace accord. The MNF bid farewell to arms and the federal government granted full statehood to Mizoram in 1987.
Memories of the 1958 mautam and the bloody insurgency that ravaged the Mizo Hills remain alive to date. Mizoram's present Chief Minister, Zoramthanga, would not have forgotten the role of mautam in prompting thousands of Mizos to pick up arms and wage war against the Indian state. After all, he was one of them. Zoramthanga was number two in the MNF hierarchy during the insurgency years.
The flowering was first noticed in 2005, at Chawngtlai bamboo forest in the southern district of Champhai.
In anticipation of the mautam and the rodent invasion, Zoramthanga's government had adopted comprehensive multi-sectoral program called Bamboo Flowering and Famine Control Schemes the preceding year. The five-year program includes harvesting of bamboo before its flowering and the diversification of agriculture (growing alternate crops like ginger and turmeric that rats don't eat) to secure livelihoods of those whose crops are likely to be ravaged by the rats.
The centerpiece of the Mizo government's counter-rat campaign has been to offer a bounty for rats. Each rat tail turned in at government collection centers earns the bounty hunter 2 rupees (US$0.05).
The reward-for-rat scheme has been in force for around five years now. In 2006 when the rat invasion gathered momentum, the government turned up the pressure by stepping up the implementation of the scheme. In 2006 alone, 200,000 rat tails were deposited with the government.
Performance on that front was even better in 2007 with the last three months alone registering more tails turned in than in the whole of 2006. According to official records, Lawngtlai and Aizawl districts had outpaced others in the race for rats' tails.
The killings continue. But to little avail, it seems. The rats continue to soldier on, ravaging crops and devastating farmers.
The food shortage in the region is serious. In December 2007, the Mizoram government declared the southern and western parts of the state as disaster-affected. It has alleged that the federal government has done little to ease the situation. Ordinary Mizos accuse their politicians and officials of eating into the relief meant for the masses.
According to a report by ActionAid, an international development non-governmental organization, "Conditions of widespread food shortages and hunger currently prevail in all the eight districts of Mizoram and there are clear manifestations of famine beginning to unfold in several locations. The conditions are most pronounced in the western and southern areas of the state notably the districts of Lawngtlai, Lungei, Saiha and Mamit where crop loss is estimated to be between 85-95%," the report said. People are starving in parts of the extreme south and southwestern areas bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. The condition in around 60 villages in Lawngtlai district is said to "very serious", according to the report.
While Mizoram is the epicenter of the rat attack, other areas in the northeast have been ravaged as well. Parts of Manipur, Tripura and Assam in India as well as Myanmar's Chin state are reeling from the rodent invasion and famine is taking grip here as well.
In Manipur, the Churachandpur and Tamenglong districts are the hardest hit by the mautam. The increase in the rat population here has resulted in food grain production falling by 87% in Churachandpur. Officials say that since 2007 the situation was no longer "famine-like" but has become a "full-blown calamity".
The situation in Manipur and especially in Churachandpur has the Indian government worried. It should be.
Manipur is the second most violence-wracked state in the strife-torn northeast, after Assam. Describing the situation in the state, Bibhu Prasad Routray, research fellow the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi writes:
Activities of about 10,000 cadres of 15 militant groups of varying sizes and character, compound an endemic collapse of the administrative machinery, taking Manipur to the threshold of a failed "state" within the Indian union. Each of Manipur's nine districts (four in the valley and five in the hills) has been affected by the unending militant violence, severely impacting on the very limited local capacities for governance, justice administration, and the provision of minimal security to citizens. State police sources indicate that, while almost all the 59 police stations have been reporting militant violence, as many as 32 of them have been slotted in the "high" violence category. And Churachandpur is a hot-bed of militancy in Manipur.There is concern that famine will further fuel anger in Chaurachandpur and other parts of Manipur, providing Manipuris yet another reason to be angry with the Indian state and insurgent outfits with a steady flow of recruits. Hence the deployment of security forces to tackle the rat menace.
It appears that the government is concerned about the influx of refugees from Myanmar as well. No relief work has been carried out in Chin areas hit by mautam, contributing to an exodus of Chins into Mizoram.
"These refugee flows coupled with Mizoram's own affected population could precipitate a major internal crisis," points out Namrata Goswami, associate fellow at the Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis.
There are reports of starvation from interior villages. Some of these villages are in remote parts of the state with no roads and difficult to access. The crisis is only now beginning to unfold and the worst is still to come. The full impact of the famine will be felt later this year, warn officials.
That's when Mizoram will go to the polls to elect representatives to its 40-member assembly. Zoramthanga had better start praying for a Pied Piper to rescue his party at the polls.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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