Why India Is Struggling To Be A World Leader In Bamboo

TSBM gives Barak/Bambusa Balcooa or Tulda to eligible beneficiaries, which farmers and experts say is of lower quality than Kanak Kaich.

Reang, in 2015, did start a bamboo plantation, but it was under a project by the the State Forest Department, along with the Indo-German Development Corporation (IGDC). Reang planted Kanak Kaich on three hectares of his land, and now supplies it to clients across India. “I send two trucks of raw material in a year. One truck carries 3,000-3,300 bamboo stalks, amounting to a little over Rs 1 lakh,” Reang says.

India is blessed with an abundance of bamboo--it is globally its second largest cultivator, with 136 species spread over 13.96 million hectares, and an annual production of 3.23 million tonnes. Despite that, the country’s share in the global bamboo market is at 4%, compared to China’s 65%, which has a forest area of 6.73 million hectares.

India’s National Bamboo Mission (NBM) was launched by the Union government in 2006-07, and subsumed under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) in 2014-15.

The focus of the mission was mainly on propagation and cultivation of bamboo, until the NBM was restructured in 2018. The new NBM guidelines expanded into processing and value chain addition of bamboo for the holistic development of the bamboo sector. The TSBM comes under the NBM.

But bamboo cultivators and experts say that the bamboo variety given under this programme gives a low yield, is only available for non-forest areas when most tribals live in forest areas, and bamboo cannot generate sufficient income for the indigenous people.

To make India a global bamboo giant, the NBM needs to provide better quality bamboo, address land issues of tribals and ensure a healthy ecosystem for entrepreneurs and artisans alike, experts say.

The National Bamboo Mission

A steep hill, part of a 30-acre park, about 5 km from the village of Naba Sadarpara, is covered with bamboo, agar, palm and sal trees as far as the eye can see. Its owner, Ananta Debbarma, headmaster of the Agartala Deshbandhu Shishir in Agartala, has named the hill, ‘New Jerusalem Hatai’, meaning God’s Own Hill--God’s own place from Jerusalem and hill from the native Kokborok word Hatai. Soon this place will be an eco-tourism park, to attract guests while also supplying raw material to industries.

Ananta Debbarma's plantations near the village of Naba Sadarpara. He says the government should give better quality bamboo under the National Bamboo Mission

A part of the bamboo growing in New Jerusalem Hatai, are called Mritanga saplings or Tulda, and have been sourced from the state’s Tripura Bamboo Mission in 2008 and in 2010. Under the Annual Action Plan of 2020-21, Rs 50 lakh, Rs 16 lakh and Rs 10 lakh has been apportioned per 2 hectares, 1 hectare and 0.5 hectare of land for Tulda plantation--100% subsidised by the government.

“But these are not of very good quality and are also thorny. The economic value is not that significant…We use it to stave off elephants,” says Debbarma, whose land is in a Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) area in West Tripura district. “What the government gives is to sink the tribal population.” Debbarma, who is also a politician, stood for state elections in 2023.

“Kanak Kaich quality is required in various enterprises making good-quality furniture products, generating more sales than the rest of the bamboo varieties. There are less bends in the Kanak Kaich bamboo unlike mritinga,” Reang adds.

Despite the revised NBM guidelines saying that the programme would promote the 'production of genetically superior planting material of bamboo species with commercial and industrial demand’, the programme provides the Tulda variety to farmers, which is low-yielding in Tripura One can generate an annual revenue of Rs 200,000 from the fourth year of planting Kanak Kaich on one hectare, as per the magazine ‘MANJARI’ by the Non-Timber Forest Product [NTFP] Center of Excellence. Reang, the farmer, told IndiaSpend, that in comparison a farmer would earn about Rs 1-1.5 lakh lower if Tulda were planted on the same land.

“Tulda bamboo has a yield of 15%, the rest is rendered as waste,” says Samir Jamatia, a bamboo technologist. And this bamboo is sold at different rates across different states--in Assam, for instance, Rs 50 would get you 20 kg of Tulda and in Tripura, it would get you between 14 and 16 kg.

In Tripura, the weight of the Tulda variety is lower, thus the quality and the strength of the bamboo will be less too. “How can you expect a good value addition with this?” says Jamatia.

In addition, the Tulda variety isn’t in demand commercially, except by local incense stick factories, he added.

Changing the variety of bamboo, from Tulda to to Kanak Kaich, could improve yield and benefit tribal beneficiaries. In 2018, Debbarma pushed forest officials at the Tripura State Bamboo Mission for a change in the bamboo variety. He even offered to provide rhizomes of Kanak Kaich--which is one of the varieties growing in his park.

We have reached out to Sreekanth K.S, deputy commissioner of the National Bamboo Mission, Raval H. Kumar, director of Tripura’s bamboo mission, and S.C. Das, additional director of the Tripura Bamboo Mission, for their comments on the quality of bamboo supplied. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Land ownership issues restrict who qualifies under the National Bamboo Mission

Even if Reang had wanted to take bamboo from the TSBM, he would be eligible as he owned private land, but that is not the case for most of the indigenous tribes in the state.

There was no ownership of tribal land until 1960, when the Tripura Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act consolidated and amended land revenue laws in Tripura. “It was only in 1961 that people started registering to document the ownership of land. Still, 90% of land in ADC areas where most of Tripura’s indigenous people live stay undocumented. In 2010, the CPI[M] had distributed 169,000 land pattas and still the ones who secured those land deeds don’t know where their land is located owing to lack of demarcation,” says Anthony Debbarma, secretary general of the Borok People’s Human Rights Organisation, a human rights NGO based in Agartala.

“When we implement afforestation programmes with partnership from JICA [Japan International Cooperation Agency], we make sure that the land is properly demarcated,” said a senior researcher associated with the NTFP Center of Excellence, Agartala, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak with the media.

“The beneficiaries under the Tripura Bamboo Mission do not have the assurance of getting the boundaries of their land marked and formally defined. That is one of the reasons they look to avoid going for such schemes, going for rubber or afforestation schemes under JICA that offers them the security of having their lands delineated,” said Jamatia.

Under the operational guidelines of the NBM, revised in June 2019, one of the objectives of the mission is: “To increase the area under bamboo plantation in non-forest government and private lands to supplement farm income and contribute towards resilience to climate change as well as availability of quality raw material requirement of industries”. Bamboo plantations were taken up in about 237,000 hectares in forest areas and about 125,000 hectares in non-forest areas, the NBM document says.

In line with this objective, if you have to access loans or credit from banks such as NABARD, people have to prove their land rights over a non-forest area, says Jamatia, which, as we explained, is hard for indigenous farmers in tribal areas.

“Poor tribals face the risk of eviction if forest resources overlap with their land claim in the forest,” and the forest department asks that tribals move from the land, says Jamatia, explaining that this is the issue rampant across north-eastern India as a whole.

However, according to Jamatia, who is also a bamboo technologist, it is not possible to increase the area under bamboo plantation only in non-forest areas as there is relatively less cultivable land in the state. Nearly 60% of land in Tripura is forest area, while about 27% is agricultural land.

To address this, Tripura’s forest department has been promoting the cultivation of Kanak Kaich bamboo in forest areas for almost a decade now, under the Tripura JICA Project, the National Afforestation Programme and others, according to researchers at the NTCP Centre of Excellence.

Competition from rubber plantations

Suksari Debbarma forages for bamboo on other plantations, but she says more and more are now converting to rubber as that is more profitable.

Just 6-7 km away from the bamboo park, in the Nimai Para village, under the Jampuijala ADC subdivision, Suksari Debbarma is surrounded by an evergreen field with splotches of ochre in between. She has stopped going to the field as the muli bamboo--locally preferred for bamboo shoots--is no longer there.

“There are no owathai [local name for muli bamboo culms] culms. Once, the field was teeming with his bamboo. Now, everything has converted to rubber,” says Suksari. Suksari forages for bamboo as she herself cannot afford plantations.

Tripura ranks second in rubber production, after Kerala.

People prefer rubber to bamboo as the Rubber Board assists farmers with land deeds as well as by offering financial assistance for rubber cultivation in the state, experts say. “Rubber has a parent body: the Rubber Board. Whereas the National Bamboo Mission comes under different departments, such as the Ministry of Textile, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry owing to which there is no clarity with regards to assistance and insurance when it comes to plantations,” explains Jamatia.

Minimal support for artisans

Chanam Nama, a bamboo artisan from Bagabasa, Tripura, who wants better training and support from the government's National Bamboo Mission, for bamboo artisans.

About 30 km away from Jampuijala, Chanam Nama, in her mid 30s, is cutting a 12-inch bamboo piece lengthwise, to make a coir basket. She has been an artisan for 20 years, in the weavers’ village of Bagabara, in Tripura’s Sepahijala district.

To collect bamboo, her husband cycles 1.5-2 km away every week to a nursery at Khondokar Para, taking time to chop mature bamboo from the clumps or to buy it off the market for Rs 250-300. It costs Nama about Rs 35,000 a year to make about 60 coir baskets of different sizes every week. The sale of these baskets barely covers their costs, she said. “Whatever I earn, I use it for household expenses and to pay bills…At times it feels I am spending more than I earn.”

Nama received training under the National Bamboo Mission. The first, a six-month training in 2010, was at Killamura S.B. School where she received a tool kit of knives, saws, chisels, measuring tools and hammers for splitting, carving and cutting bamboo. The NMB allocates up to 5% of its fund for training artisans, and each artisan is paid Rs 1,000 per day, or as per the rate decided by the government institute where the training is happening.

Nama attends routine training to upgrade her skills, but says she now thinks twice before joining a session. In a previous session, in 2022, she did not receive the promised stipend of Rs 50 per day for the 15-day session, and the government did not cover the travel.

In addition, the training sessions now do not include anything she does not already know. “It feels like a task to be ticked off without any benefit for us. I know how to make chattai [mats] and bamboo stools and pineapple-shaped bamboo baskets. They teach the same stuff all the time,” she says.

Three other weavers in the village said they did not receive the stipend from the government at these training sessions.

We have reached out to Sreekanth K.S, deputy commissioner of the National Bamboo Mission, and Raval H. Kumar, director of Tripura’s bamboo mission, for their comments on the problems faced by artisans and farmers and will update the story when we receive a response.

A bamboo plantation in Sepahijala district in Tripura.

Hurdles in the bamboo supply chain

Many farmers feel that with the shutting down of two major bamboo procurers in Nagaon--Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited and HPC Paper Mills which closed in 2017--there is little demand for bamboo for industrial use other than for making incense sticks.

Because the paper factories have closed, farmers in Karbi Anglong are slowly shifting their focus to planting betel nuts, pineapple and rubber.

In addition, bamboo suppliers, who buy bamboo from farmers and sell to industry, and form an integral part of the bamboo supply chain, say they have to pay fines for the transport of bamboo. Mofidul Islam sources bamboo from villages near the Hamren town in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district, since the launch of the NBM. The industries he supplies ask that the bamboo sticks be between 25 and 27 feet, while the truck body is only 22 feet. The result is that the bamboo sticks out of the back of the truck [which is not allowed] and forest officials ask for a fine to allow transportation.

“The transportation cost of bamboo is around 45-50% of the landing cost of bamboo till you reach the industrial areas in Assam particularly because of the terrain…The required suitable vehicle to carry the standard length of an industrial bamboo of 25-26 ft cannot operate in that terrain,” says a bamboo entrepreneur in Assam, who did not want to be named. He says there should be new guidelines for transport of bamboo and the government should support entrepreneurs instead of levying fines.

Islam pays Rs 40-45 per kg to a bamboo farmer, and asks that they cut mature bamboo stalks located in the heart of the grove, not the ones growing outside. However, businesses outside demand all the bamboo to be cut, paying as low as Rs 30-35 for the low-quality bamboo. “If such practices continue, it will be difficult to maintain a consistent supply of bamboo as it leads towards deforestation,” Islam said.

We have reached out to Sreekanth K.S, deputy commissioner of the National Bamboo Mission, for comment on the problems associated with transportation of bamboo and its supply chain, and will update the story when we receive a response.

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