New Delhi, Dec 17: The entire Northeast, especially Mizoram, is gearing up to deal with an early famine warning, signaled by a phenomenon that occurs once in 48 years - the gregarious flowering of bamboo.
The last bamboo flowering led to a famine and the govt. is working to avert the possibility this time around. The steering committee on the management of Prospective Gregarious Flowering of Muli Bamboo held a meeting on Tuesday to request the govt. to remove restrictions on the export of Muli bamboo.
The committee, under the chairmanship of Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests Prodipto Ghosh, has decided to set up a task force to look into a possible spurt in the population of rodents, which usually follows the flowering of bamboo. A similar spurt, by chain reaction, led to a famine in 1959.
Around 26 million tonnes of Muli bamboo is expected to go waste as more than half the crop is in inaccessible areas. The committee has decided to sell the bamboo in the accessible areas to the highest bidder on day-to-day basis.

India has the largest bamboo resource in the world and bamboo forests in India occupy 10.03 million hectares, roughly 12.8% of the total area of the country. Gregarious flowering over vast tracks is followed by death of the bamboo clumps, resulting in a seed explosion. This feeds the rodents, which later turn to farmlands when the seeds germinate after the rains, leading to a famine. The next gregarious flowering is expected to start next year and peak in 2007
The steering committee, in its first meeting on August 5, had constituted two committees to suggest remedial measures. The committee chaired by R.P.S. Katwal, Director General of Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) has suggested mixed vegetative growth after the flowering to rejuvenate the soil. The other committee headed by the chief secretary of Mizoram has called for improved and modified system of harvesting and marketing.
The steering committee has decided that the extraction of bamboo and regeneration should be done through local communities and joint forest management groups. The committee will meet next in April.