Mizo masterplan to revamp farming

Policy aims at abolishing jhum method

OUR CORRESPONDENT

A new beginning Silchar, May 9: The Congress government in Mizoram will launch its masterplan to develop farming in the state sometime in end-July. This agriculture scheme called , the new land use policy, will replace the primitive method of the jhum (slash and burn) farming in the state by a permanent system of cultivation on the hill slopes and on the fallow lands in the valleys. The policy, which will cost both the central and state exchequers Rs 2,907.90 crore, will help increase food output by seven folds in five years. P.L. Thanga, the vice-chairman of the project in the state, said in Aizawl yesterday that a baseline survey of the farmers’ present economic status in the state had already been completed in September last year by Young Mizo Association, an NGO which has its branch in each village and hamlet in the state. Thanga, a retired IAS officer who is also the secretary of the state planning board, added that the government had sought suggestions as well as amendments from the people for this survey, which has identified those farmers who now need both cash and material grants to overhaul their age-old farming practice. The deadline for sending in the suggestions is May 31. Thanga said the final reports about those possible recipients of help under the policy would be submitted to the project board on June 21, and the formal notification for flagging off this ambitious project would be issued on July 9. Official sources in Aizawl hoped that this project, which was conceived during the Congress regime in the state between 1993 and 1998 and then revived after chief minister and state Congress chief Lalthan-hawla was back in power again in December 2008, is likely to be formally operational in the last week of July. A fixed date for its inauguration would be announced soon, the sources said. The sources also said the policy would be a multi-pronged plan where apart from farming regeneration, its mainstay, attention would also be given to accelerate the output of horticulture products such as grapes, ginger, papaya and passion fruit (sapthei), handicrafts, milk production and fisheries. This year at least 17,046 hectares of forestland in the state were devoured by the bushfire, a result of the burn and slash method.