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| Feb 14, 2000 | ||
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| RI-BHOI, MEGHALAYA
Sweep Stakes Easy to grow, easy to sell-broom growers reap the benefits By Avirook Sen
Every year, broom trader Kailash Agarwal travels to the state's Ri-Bhoi district from Calcutta to cash in. "We come here because there is a huge production of broom grass and the rates are the best," he says. "We take the grass from here and get them tied into brooms in Shillong. After that they go to households all over the country." Meghalaya's undulating landscape provides the ideal ground for the tall grass. Broom grass grows at altitudes of up to 5,600 ft; the hills here aren't too high. Moreover, the plant is remarkably well adapted to all kinds of soil and grows on practically all soil surfaces found in Meghalaya -- even broken rock surfaces.
The whole amount, however, does not go to the villagers who harvest the grass. Says W. Syngle of Beesmile, a small settlement just off the Guwahati-Shillong road: "We get around Rs 16 a kg from the buyers. The middlemen take the rest." But even this fetches the average household Rs 6,000-7,000 a year in additional income. Some families, according to the Forest Department, have made as much as ten times that. Attractive returns since the plant requires very little care -- just occasional weeding -- and is perennial in nature. The hard work only comes at the time of the harvest when the plant has to be cut and dried. The income from brooms is more than welcome because it gives the cultivators something to fall back on during the idle winter months. Meghalaya depends mainly on summer crops. The cold months are usually spent preparing for the next round of jhooming (clearing the forest by burning, which is the traditional mode of cultivation in the Northeast), collecting firewood and hunting. It is difficult at this time of the year to earn even Rs 100 a week, say locals, unless there is some road construction going on. The Meghalaya government decided to promote the plantation of broom grass in 1995. The scheme, from all accounts, has met with great success. The low maintenance and high yield (by the fourth year of cultivation, farmers can get 400 kg a hectare, sometimes even up to 700 kg) is what attracts the cultivators. And local headmen have been assigned the task of allotting between one and two hectares of land to a family. Given that the grass grows all over the state, it is estimated that its cultivation benefits nearly 40,000 families in a state with a population of just over two million. The broom boom has other advantages too. Degraded jhoom land becomes productive because broom grass survives on any kind of soil. In fact, the biomass produced by the plant actually increases the fertility of the soil. Besides, with an alternative source of income, the villagers need not cut down forests to support themselves. This takes care in part of Meghalaya's other major problem -- that of soil erosion due to degradation of forests. Even though the grass is reed-like, the rhizome and its fibrous roots hold the soil together on the steep slopes. Now which vacuum cleaner can claim to do all this? |
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But its abundance
is probably one reason why people didn't see the broom's potential as
a revenue earner. Not long ago, the locals didn't even know that the national
demand for broomsticks could earn them a neat sum. All that changed after
the Meghalaya Forest Department began to carry its brooms to international
trade fairs. "At a trade fair in Delhi in 1994 there was an overwhelming
response. We got enquiries from all over the country," says Nongbri.
By the following year, the price of a quintal of broom grass shot up from
Rs 1,100 to Rs 3,000.