Photo feature

Mautam trouble in Mizoram

As the bamboo blossoms, so do theories about the mysterious mautam.

Text by : Linda Chhakchhuak
Photographs by : James Lalsiamlianan

Click on thumbnail for larger image

The world is watching Mizoram. And Mizoram watches and waits for the rats. This is the land where the mautam, the flowering of the omnipresent bamboo, is said to herald troubles of epic proportions, as the dying bamboo triggers a cycle that forces an expanded population of rats out into the jhum clearings. Experts reckon that the bamboo will reach the end of its 50-year lifecycle this year. In a process that began in mid-2006, the long mountain ranges have now turned brown, as bamboo brake after bamboo brake follow their ancient biological clock and simultaneously blossom, like the crescendo of a chorus.

Will the foretold rat invasion come again? Will even the brinjals turn into rodents, and come in waves to raid the habitations and cultivations? Will there be a famine? Is the insect invasion with which Mizoram is currently plagued part of the cycle? Or has the insect – the Hemipteran locally known as the thangang, which is eaten by the Mizo for its high oil content – been sent to help the people overcome the curse of the bamboo cycle, as local lore holds? The height of the bamboo cycle has always heralded the armies of thangang; hordes of the insects suddenly appear overnight on walls, tree trunks and any other surface on which they can land. Their silent, static assembly, which destroys not a single blade of grass, is another mystery of nature. No observer ever sees them flying or marching. How do they get here? And what do they eat as they remain in stasis?

As science has fallen far short of answers to these questions, we have again to turn to traditional Mizo tales. Folklore says that the thangang are sent by god (or nature, depending on the interpretation) as a soft balm for jhum-dependent humans suffering from the dryness and hunger inherent to the climax of the bamboo cycle. In the old days, when edible oil
could not be purchased in any local shop, oil came packaged in the thangang. Mizo lore recounts how the people of the area, sick and near starvation, would eagerly, hungrily await the swarming thangang.

Phenomena such as the bamboo cycle and swarming thangang, and the traditional knowledge associated with them, only increase the modern-day queries. Answers? There are none. At least, not yet.
 
From rats to humans
In remote, mountainous Mizoram, the myth and reality of the bamboo’s lifecycle have cocktailed into a pungent, heady story, attracting the widespread attention of the global media and scientific community. It has also attracted the nervous attention of the government – which is prodded on, no doubt, by the nightmare of insurgency that exploded here during the last flowering years, which began in 1959. This part of the tale, too, leaves many wondering. Was there a connection between the famine and the foundation of the Mizo National Front? Was it just coincidence, or the handiwork of a few politicians adept in that ancient skill of politics: taking advantage of a situation, and taking the people for a ride?

Over the past half-decade, reams of newsprint out the state capital Aizawl have been spent on writings anticipating the coming mautam. Headlines have periodically screamed that the rat invasion has already begun, only to be downplayed the very next day. Many an in-house scribe and out-station journalist, and foreign and Indian scientist alike, have, along with leagues of the just-so-curious, nosed around and formed their own opinions about what they have seen and heard. The proverbial blind men trying to figure out the shape of an elephant might as well have been scrabbling around a flowering bamboo brake.

But whatever the whole picture, the only advice that James Lalsiamliana, Mizoram’s Assistant Plant Protection Officer, could hazard at the time of writing was that everyone would just have to wait for a few more weeks to see what the next chapter of the Mizo bamboo story will bring. That is when the rat invasion is expected to come. The cycle was already completed in the eastern and northeastern parts of the state last year, where farmers’ crops were suddenly devoured by rats. But people were saved from starvation thanks to the modern amenities now available. Unlike in the 1960s, when the Public Distribution System (PDS) did not exist and people were solely dependant on their jhum fields, now PDS rice reaches everywhere – or at least is supposed to – through a network of roads that has expanded over the years. The market too has expanded into these once remote areas, where people with money can now easily buy rice. During the 1960s, money itself was a rare commodity!

Lalsiamliana’s unique job has made him into something of an in-house expert on the bamboo phenomena, just as C Rokhuma, then-chairman of the Tamdo Pawl (Anti Famine Organisation), became the undoubted local expert of the 1959 period. Luckily for everyone interested in the subject, Rokhuma, now 90 years old, is still around to tell the tale, share his experiences and make observations, which have helped to throw light on this extraordinary display of nature’s mysterious workings.

Rokhuma is hailed as the “only researcher on rats during mautam” in Mizoram. From experiments conducted in his laboratory at home over the years, he has concluded that rats eat bamboo seeds, which then increases their fertility. But K Lalchhandama, as with other local scientists, says that “generally, rats do not or cannot eat the hard bamboo seed.” If they do eat it, however, “what are the chemical attributes of bamboo seeds which help the growth of fertility of rats?” A lot of questions are left unanswered, Lalchhandama says, and “a lot of research is needed.” Rokhuma, for his part, insists that he has observed rats eat bamboo seeds. It may just be that the abundance of food is what causes the rats to multiply during the flowering period. The secret seems to be in when the rats can crack the seeds open.

As Lalsiamliana notes, as the bamboo blossoms, the rodents are surrounded by a virtually endless store of food – endless, that is, until the seeds germinate into shoots, which is expected to happen some time in July. Quickly, the young shoots develop a thick, hard, hairy protective cover, which the rats do not consider palatable. That is when the suddenly famine-stricken rat population ventures out of the dying bamboo habitat in search of other food. Most of Mizoram’s hills (as well as those of Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Tripura and parts of northern Burma) are covered uniformly by an ocean of bamboo forests, and so the rats have nowhere to go for food but to the hill farmers’ jhum plots, which are veritable oases among the dead bamboo jungle. As they eat up the crops, the famine is passed on to the humans.

Spectre of 1959
Mizo folklore emphasises the psychological effects that the bamboo cycle has on human beings. This is not particularly surprising, given that much in traditional Mizo life revolves around bamboo: houses, water carriers, fences, baskets, store houses, spoons, jugs, chairs and mats are all bamboo, not to mention edible bamboo shoots. Even in the 21st century, people in Mizoram and its adjoining areas would find life without bamboo impossible to contemplate.

While (or perhaps because) it is still associated with famine, the bamboo’s current flowering has bought Mizoram a windfall of money. Over the past several years, the New Delhi government has poured crores of rupees into schemes for the hill farmers, with an eye towards lightening the impact of the bamboo cycle and the rat infestation. But it is another kind of hungry rat that seems to have eaten away most of that money – an uncanny throwback to the uncaring government incumbents during 1959-1965, who sowed the seeds of rebellion among a peaceful but momentarily desperate citizenry. This time around, most of Mizoram’s schemes have proved relatively ineffective, largely due to the fact that they were not designed to benefit the farmers: it was mostly the contractors, industrialists and city-based ‘farmers’ who have made off with the lion’s share of the funds. After a public outcry last year, however, the scheme was reoriented towards giving direct monetary support to hill farmers whose crops stood to be devoured by the rats.

Also eerily reminiscent of the misdemeanours of New Delhi authorities during the 1960s was the recent decision by the Central Food and Supplies Ministry to cut Mizoram’s quota of rice. The Centre has reduced this by more than 60 percent since last April, leading to massive shortages. Although this move has been explained as an attempt to plug leakages in the Public Distribution System, by which PDS-allotted rice was being diverted and sold outside the state, the timing of this attempt to impose Central ‘discipline’ was terrible, and could have led to major civil unrest.

The alarm sounded by the Mizoram government that the rice shortages might compound the mautam famine fell on deaf ears until June, when a New Delhi team visited the state to find out the ‘truth’ about the destruction of the jhum fields by rats and the demand for more rice. The team will now try to figure out what kind of rats are behind the rice shortage – rodent or human. In the meantime, the team has advised the state’s farmers to diversify their crops, and said that it will recommend schemes for job generation to enable the people to have some cash. It has also promised to increase the allotment of rice, to tide Mizoram’s people over the blooming bamboo crisis.