National Bamboo Mission:
- It has an outlay of Rs.1290 crore to promote bamboo sector in a holistic manner.
- Bamboo is ‘Green Gold’.
- The National Bamboo Mission is a wholly-sponsored central scheme.
How will it advance the economy?
- Bamboo is essentially a type of grass, but its classification as a tree for 90 years prevented the northeast, which grows 67% of India’s bamboo, from exploiting it
- The inclusion of bamboo in forest produce items has affected its marketability as bamboo grown by farmers could not be harvested
- The introduction of a new policy for transit of bamboo from non-forest areas will further boost the bamboo sector in the Northeast, where more than 50 per cent of India’s bamboo resources are available
Issues
- The flowering of bamboo every 50-55 years leads to dramatic increase in the population of rats that destroy crops triggering famine, locally called mautam.
- There have also been instances of bamboo cartels shedding blood while competing for limited commercial opportunities
What needs to be done?
Restructured NBM needs to be more focussed on value-chain management and value-addition of bamboo at community level which will bring more income to the bamboo farmers and bamboo processors.