_ report by Project Maje (http://www.projectmaje.org/)
Many reports still call it “folklore” or “superstition” but it is a historical and biological fact: the bamboo species Melocanna baccifera blossoms en masse approximately every 48 years. This particular type of bamboo grows throughout a large area of Northeast India (primarily in Mizoram and Manipur States) as well as regions of Burma (mainly Chin State) and Bangladesh (Hill Tracts.) It densely covers valleys and hillsides in the typically rugged terrain of the region. The blossoming bamboo produces fruit, then dies off. The fruit has a large seed, resembles avocado, and is packed with protein and other nutrients. During the fruiting stage of the cycle, local species of forest rats feed on the bamboo fruits/seeds. The rats cease cannibalizing their young and begin to reproduce in an accelerated birth surge, producing a new rat generation as often as every three months. Once the burgeoning population of rats has stripped the forest of bamboo fruit/seeds, nocturnal rat swarms quietly invade farms and villages to devour crops and stored rice, other grains, potatoes, maize, other vegetables, chili, and sesame. The rodents often grow to particularly large sizes and can gnaw through bamboo and wood floors, walls, storage containers and granaries. This phenomenon has historically resulted in mass starvation among the indigenous peoples of the region where Melocanna baccifera bamboo grows. According to The Times of India, “the last flowering in Mizoram, in 1958-59, caused a famine that killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of livelihoods.” The bamboo flowering and rat infestation cycle has in the past lasted for about three years, until the rats run out of food and their populations return to normal.
The bamboo flowering cycle is called “Mautam” by the Mizo people of Mizoram and the related Chin people of Burma. It is called “Yu Li Hku” (rat famine) by the people of northern Burma’s Kachin State. These indigenous people’s predictions of the cycle and its effects have been discounted by government authorities in the past. When the Indian government ignored the situation in 1959 it resulted in a long-running insurgency. In “Strangers of the Mist” Sanjoy Hazarika wrote, “the Mizos formed a few famine-fighting squads. The most prominent of these groups was the Mizo Famine Front (MFF), launched by a young bank clerk named Laldenga… Eventually the Mizo Famine Front was converted into the Mizo National Front (MNF) with independence as its goal.” The MNF fought the Indian army until a peace settlement in the mid 1980s brought a mutually acceptable level of autonomy to Mizoram. A former MNF leader, Zoramthanga is currently Chief Minister of Mizoram State.
“The blossoming, the rat problem, and the food shortages began two years ago in India then moved into Bangladesh in January and have now headed south into Burma as well.” BBC News, March 22, 2008
Having learned a lesson from the late 50s - early 60s famine, the government of India has been preparing for the present bamboo flowering cycle since 2001, with the active participation of the Mizoram State government, and the expertise of botanists and zoologists. Still, no plan was developed which could actually prevent the first Mautam of the 21st Century, or even effectively mitigate it. Rat population control centered on incentives for rat killing, paid by government agencies which collect rat tails as proof. Some experts advocated establishing open spaces between bamboo forests and farms or villages to keep the rats away. Building rat-proof granaries was another strategy that was promoted. Zoramthanga’s Mizoram State government advocated cutting and selling bamboo as it began to die off, but even culling for commercial export did not significantly reduce the vast thickets in largely inaccessible hill areas. Perhaps the most useful measures were the construction of roads to remote Mizoram villages, and helipads in the most remote mountain areas, so that food relief aid could be brought in when the Mautam’s inevitable effects took place.
In October, 2005 the first bamboo flowers appeared in Northeast India. The rodent swarms followed, as always. Indian troops stationed in the Northeast were dispatched on rat killing patrols. By 2007, the rats had ravaged food and seed stocks. The Indian Government, US Government and non-government organizations (NGOs) funded food relief for the affected areas.
Despite the years of preparation, some observers (including Mizoram’s bloggers) considered the response to the Mautam crisis by the Indian and Mizoram State governments inadequate, even corrupt, with possible political repercussions. An Asia Times report predicted that Mizoram’s food crisis would be at its worst in the Fall, commenting, “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.” The Mautam had become a political issue, with the leader of India’s Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, visiting Mizoram in mid-June, 2008 and criticizing the Mizoram State government, commenting, “During this visit I have seen how the MNF government has failed to tackle the famine despite huge central funds allocated to deal with the famine.”
In Bangladesh, where the bamboo flowering takes place in the politically unstable Hill Tracts (Chittagong, Bandarban, Rangamati) there had been little preparation and the effects were obvious in 2008, with a BBC report quoting a village rat catcher: “My wife, my five children and I normally eat rice, but the rats have destroyed everything… All we have left are the rats and these wild potatoes.” In mid-July, 2008 the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) announced that it had commenced food relief aid (rice, cooking oil and nutrition biscuits) distribution to Mautam affected people in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts.
According to “Critical Point: Food Scarcity and Hunger in Burma’s Chin State” a July 2008 report by the Chin Human Rights Organization, as much as one fifth of Burma’s Chin State is covered with bamboo forests. Chin State, in Burma’s northwest, borders Northeast India. It is a particularly impoverished and isolated region of Burma. Most people are hill rice farmers, of the predominantly Christian Chin (also called Zo) ethnic groups, related to the Mizo people of India. The Chins have suffered ethnic and religious persecution by the military regime of Burma, and a small scale insurgency by the Chin National Front (CNF) is active. The CNF normally imposes a tax of 3,000 kyats per person, per year on villagers in its areas of operation, but issued a statement in February 2008 pledging to reduce that amount to just a token 10 kyats during the Mautam crisis.
“Critical Point” states that due to the Mautam and other factors, “as many as 200 villages may be directly affected by severe food shortages, and no less than 100,000 people or 20 percent of the entire population of Chin State may be in need of immediate food aid.” According to “Critical Point” the bamboo flowering first happened in Burma in 2006, with the rodent infestation increasing through 2007 until “in the most affected areas of Paletwa and Matupi townships, farmers are left with just a tenth of their usual harvest after the rats attack their rice fields” The bamboo die-off would also affect the Chins through the loss of harvestable bamboo that they use for most of their building and implements.
In contrast to the bordering regions of India, there had been little to no government response to the impending Mautam by Burma’s military regime (which calls the country “Myanmar.”) As was obvious from the regime’s response to May 2008’s Cyclone Nargis in the southern Irrawaddy Delta region, Burma’s regime has minimal interest in effective relief aid or sustainable development, especially in non-Burman ethnic regions. “Critical Point” cites other factors contributing to “food insecurity” in the Chin State even before the Mautam, particularly the regime’s forced conversion of food crop land to tea and jatropha plantations (jatropha is an introduced crop intended for biofuel use.) “Critical Point” also cited pressures on farmers from corruption and excessive taxation such as the regime’s 2,000 kyats per family “farming permit” plus confiscation of 240 kilograms of harvested rice.
2008 has been a bad food year for the whole world, with rice shortages in much of Asia. Burma stood to lose most of the mid-year rice crop in its most productive region, the southern Irrawaddy Delta, due to inundation by Cyclone Nargis in May. By mid-2008, increasing reports had emerged of a hunger belt in western Chin State. With grain crops gone, malnutrition had increased. Rural Chins were relying on foraging for “famine foods”: roots (wild yam) dug up in the forest, tree pith cooked to an edible state. For agricultural people, transitioning to a hunter gatherer food economy can be very difficult. Attempting to live on rats and roots may not provide enough nutrients and carbohydrates, particularly for children, the elderly and pregnant or nursing mothers. Also, the rats’ meat is often contaminated by poisons used to kill them. The final and worst Mautam stage happens when the rats die off, rice crops and stocks are gone, and “famine food” sources like forest tubers are depleted. At that point, foraging is no longer an option, and people no longer have the energy to move in search of food.
According to “Critical Point” there had been no confirmed starvation deaths from the Mautam in Chin State as of June 2008, although health problems which may be directly related to it are reported to have caused fatalities in the affected regions. A UN World Food Program (WFP) assessment in early 2008 concluded that there was no famine or starvation at that time, although “Critical Point” noted that the WFP assessment did not take place in the more remote rural villages of the hunger belt. The WFP established a group of Rangoon (Yangon) Burma based aid agencies to monitor the food situation in Chin State during the Mautam. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was to conduct its own assessment, and reportedly donated emergency rice in an area to the north of the hardest hit Mautam region. Overall, the UN agencies appeared to lack a consistent presence in the most Mautam affected areas during the first half of 2008.
Chin organizations and individuals are currently emphasizing the need to bring food relief and seed stock to affected areas before the historical syndrome of mass casualties from a Mautam famine takes place again. In a July 9, 2008 press release, the CHRO’s executive director Salai Bawi Lian Mang commented, “The situation is at a critical point. The people of Chin State are on the brink of starvation. Action must be taken now to respond to this crisis.”
Farmers from the hunger belt have reportedly sold their possessions and livestock, in order to obtain money to buy rice. Numerous Chin families rely on money remittances from relatives who are working overseas, in order to purchase rice, but the money transmittal process can be very slow, and the overseas workers usually have little income to spare. Some of the rural people have moved to towns in Chin State in hopes of being able to obtain rice there, although according to “Critical Point” it is now exorbitantly expensive at 30,000 kyats for a 50 kilogram bag (which would feed a typical family of five for about a month.) There has been at least one report of armed robbery of rice in Chin State.
Delegations have been sent from Chin villages to MIzoram to offer domestic and wild animals in exchange for rice, or to plead for food donations from churches in Mizoram. Not only is it difficult to buy rice — Mizoram having been hit by the same Mautam — but the cost of transporting it back to the affected villages is very high. Hundreds of villagers have reportedly migrated into Mizoram, either anticipating the affects of the Mautam in Chin State or after they directly suffered its effects. If this trend continues, it may provoke tensions in Mizoram, which has been less than tolerant of Chin refugees in the past and now has its own resources badly strained by the Mautam. The Mautam is also likely to increase the outflow of Chin people to other countries such as Malaysia.
Burma Response
As the Mautam began in Chin State, Burma’s regime seemed to pay scant attention to it. The Ministry of Agriculture was to conduct an assessment of the situation in early 2008, but if that survey was completed, the results were apparently not made public. According to the CHRO, some church donations of relief rice were confiscated by local regime representatives and then sold at an inflated price. Konumthung News quoted a villager about asking Burma army troops stationed in the area for help: “The soldiers shot some rats that weighed as much as 15 kilograms. The soldiers were amazed at the size of the rats and took pictures for their record.”
Chin underground and exile information networks have made efforts to publicize the Mautam situation. In addition to “Critical Point,” CHRO has issued press releases and published reports in its Rhododendron magazine/website. India based Burma exile news agencies Konumthung News and Mizzima News, and the Chinland Guardian news website, covered the onset of the Mautam. The Northeast India aspect of the Mautam has been reported on for several years by the BBC and other respected international news outlets, including an in-depth piece in Vanity Fair magazine by Alex Shoumatoff. But it was not until June 2008 that news of the Chin State Mautam finally reached the mainstream world press with a Telegraph UK report, “Plague of Rats Devastates Burma Villages.” The Telegraph quoted Benny Manser, a British photographer who managed to visit the Mautam affected area of Chin State (despite extremely restricted access for foreigners): “We saw stick-thin children and old women who hardly had the strength left to dig up roots to eat. Villagers were telling of vast packs of rats, thousands strong, which would turn up overnight out of the bamboo thickets and eat everything in sight.”
In June, 2008, a Chin delegation went to London and met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown to request relief aid for the Mautam affected region of Chin State. Cheery Zahau of the Women’s League of Chinland, a delegation member, was quoted in The Telegraph: “The reports that are trickling out to India are heartbreaking. They tell of dehydrated children dying of diarrhea and the poorest and weakest being left behind as stronger villagers start to escape over the border to where there is food. We don’t really know what is happening deep inside Chin State where there are no telephones or roads. We fear that thousands will die if no help is made available.”
As was apparent in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, when the regime of Burma will not facilitate relief aid, grassroots groups must take action as best they can. Such a do-it-yourself equivalent of a civil society occurs without the regime’s approval and often with its hindrance, but it can be powerfully effective. In the Chin State, Protestant and Catholic churches have been been vital in gathering information, requesting aid on behalf of rural people, and distributing aid. Mizoram based churches for Chin exiles have raised funds for relief, along with overseas Chin congregations and individuals. A series of concerts by Chin and Mizo singers will take place in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore in August/September 2008, as benefits for Chin State Mautam relief.
A Burma-based NGO, the Maraland Social Welfare and Development Committee (MSWDC) has prepared fact-finding reports and alerts, brought food relief to Chin areas, and encouraged ginger planting (the forest rats do not eat ginger or turmeric, and some believe they may be repelled by those aromatic root crops.) Also inside Burma, a Rangoon (Yangon) based Joint Famine Relief Committee was formed to provide “sustainable relief” through livelihood projects for the Chin State, supporting efforts by the MSWDC.
In February 2008, Chin exiles in Mizoram founded the Chin Famine Emergency Relief Committee (CFERC.) The group dispatched fact-finding teams to Chin State and organized fundraising through Chin churches in Mizoram, as well as overseas churches. A CFERC informational website, went online in July 2008: http://www.chinrelief.org/
A report by the Free Burma Rangers, an NGO with a chapter operating in northern Arakan and southern Chin State, was released in July 2008. The Arakan FBR team reported witnessing the effects of the Mautam on villagers who were “crying with hunger” in the far north of Arakan and accused Burma regime troops of obstructing and diverting relief aid. Additionally, the WFP was providing emergency food relief in northern Arakan due to other factors, including heavy monsoon rains, as of July 2008.
Suggestions
Ideally, relief aid including emergency rice and seed stocks, with rat-proof containers, would be given directly to the hunger belt of Chin State by Burma’s regime (which is wealthy, with a reported US$150 million a month income from its petroleum joint ventures with France’s Total, the United States’ Chevron, South Korea’s Daewoo, China, Thailand and India) or the United Nations and other international donors. However, the Chin people struggle for survival in a much less than ideal world. Most Mautam relief efforts at present appear to be relying on underground networks to fund local food purchases and donations. For more information on how to support such efforts, the CEFRC can be contacted through its website: http://www.chinrelief.org/
It is too much to expect Mizoram State to support a new population of Mautam refugees, when it is dealing with its own food shortages. If people continue to flee Chin State’s Mautam to Northeast India, there may have to be special internationally funded food programs for them — even though such programs could act as a magnet for yet more migrants and it would be far better to help people in their own homeland. Chin hunger migrants and other refugees may need special protection in Northeast India, if local people increasingly resent their presence.
India’s national government has close economic ties (involving petroleum) with Burma’s regime. Perhaps India can encourage the sending of relief aid directly to Chin State, as an issue involved with India’s own security concerns for Northeast India. Or India could return to being an advocate for democratic change in Burma, rather than an economic perpetuator of the present regime. At the very least, India and the border state governments should not hinder cross-border aid and investigation efforts for Chin State by international journalists and relief workers.
The United Nations was less than optimally effective in persuading Burma’s regime to allow large scale disaster relief immediately after Cyclone Nargis. The UN could take a more proactive role in trying to prevent another disaster in Chin State from becoming large scale. Expanding the World Food Program’s local partnerships to include church social welfare groups throughout the Mautam affected areas of Chin State would be a useful step. As the World Food Program provides emergency aid in Bangladesh due to the bamboo flowering, the WFP should be careful not to assume that the Mautam situation in Burma’s Chin State is any better than in the adjacent Chittagong Hill Tracts.
While long-term development aid to improve agricultural livelihoods in Chin regions is obviously a very worthwhile effort, it should be noted that the Mautam is a short-term emergency situation, requiring relief food donations. The goal of making Chin State more food productive in the future should not be prioritized in conflict with the immediate need to keep people whose crops are obliterated by the Mautam rats from dying of hunger.
NGOs currently active inside Burma may possibly be able to initiate efforts in the northwest Burma hunger belt with official Burma regime permission. Other NGOs may find ways to provide relief aid on a cross-border unofficial basis, supporting local groups.