Bamboo in Orissa: Trade and Livelihood Perspective - Vasundhara

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advantageous to the protecting villagers, by persuading them to collect the seeds so that the
Department could arrange for the disposal of same at Rs.100 to 150 per kg(dry), which
would have helped the villagers earn something from this source. About 10 quintal seed
was expected to be collected. However, before this could be done the bushes caught fire
and the chance was lost(per comm.., Kishore Kumar Parida). Otherwise, calculated at a
collection rate of 4.5 kg seeds/manday, it could have generated about 2222 mandays.
Flowering in bamboo: a concern over the ages:
In North-Eastern States, about 26 million tons of muli bamboo(Melocanna baciifera) are
expected to flower over an area of 18000 sq. km. during 2004-07(Wastelands News, Feb-
April 2004, p.3) causing great concern among the concerned states as gregarious flowering
of bamboo would mean mass-death of bamboo clumps over large areas increasing the risk
of forest fire. Moreover, people are psychologically scared because such phenomenon has
often been associated with calamities like famines, floods and human deaths, thus being
perceived as an evil sign. Hence, a Steering Committee on the Management of Prospective
Gregarious Flowering of Muli Bamboo was constituted to look after the mitigation of this
natural problem(The New Indian Express,18.12.03, p.9).
In 1959 in Mizoram, gregarious flowering of bamboo led to famine causing about 15000
deaths. As the Govt of India did not reacted satisfactorily to this disaster, the resentment
among the people is said to have promoted militancy in the state for many years(Christian
Science Monitor quoted in Hazari N., The Samaj, 15-12-04, p.9).
OFDC harvested total 237508 MT of bamboo during 1991-92 out of which 26488
MT(11.15%) was flowered bamboo(source: OFDC). With flowering, the culms become
drier making themselves vulnerable to fire. Destruction of such clumps/forests by catching
fire either through natural means or through human intervention has been a matter of great
concern for foresters and ecologists/environmentalists.
Flowering leads to the production of seeds, and in gregarious flowering the quantity of
seeds produced is huge. It is said that when these seeds fall here and there on the ground,
the rodent population is benefited because bamboo seed is their food. This in turn leads to
significant increase in their population, and when the seeds are exhausted, they turn
towards human habitations in search of food and destroy granaries, etc. which causes
shortage of food among the villagers. Moreover, these rodents can make holes in
embankments and dams leading to the collapse of the latter, and the resulting disaster. This
theory attempts to explain scientifically the reasons behind people's experiences of
disasters related to bamboo flowering, but recent studies by two researchers D.Girish and
B.Akarsh in the Bhadra Tiger Reserve in Karnataka found otherwise in case of gregarious
flowering of B.arundinasia . They found that instead of any increase in rodent population,
population of certain bird species, which feed on these seeds, increased. Similarly
increased was the population of a bug which thrives on bamboo seeds. The researchers
found that nature has its own mechanism to regulate the regeneration of bamboo by using
these bugs and birds(Gubbi S., Flowering of Life, Sanctuary Asia, Feb. 2004,pp.30-31).
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