When NECTAR turned poison for bamboo

When NECTAR turned poison for bamboo

What has happened?

Bamboo farmers and entrepreneurs in the Northeast got a flicker of hope when Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley allocated Rs. 1,290 crore in Budget 2018 for a restructured National Bamboo Mission (NMB)

President’s ordinance

This followed President Ram Nath Kovind’s ordinance in November 2017 amending the Indian Forest Act to rid bamboo, botanically a grass, of its tree tag for 90 years and exempting it from requiring permits for felling or transportation. 

But NE not getting its hopes up.Why?

Reason: This is because of the failure of the Rs. 1,400-crore NMB from 2007-2014 as well as a related initiative called the North East Centre for Technology Application and Reach (NECTAR)

Failure of NMBA

• The Department of Science and Technology (DST) had in 2004 launched the National Mission on Bamboo Application (NMBA) with an outlay of Rs. 200 crore.
• In almost a decade since, the NMBA has spent Rs. 100 crore on building demo bamboo houses that hardly impacted lives across India’s bamboo belts.
• An amount of Rs. 40 crore, refundable in instalments, was also provided to entrepreneurs as technology development assistance for partly procuring machinery and equipment
• Contrary to its name, the NMBA neither developed any technology nor facilitated technology transfer for the assisted units
• Bamboo entrepreneurs said the NMBA also failed to develop market linkages and virtually went off the radar
• The Centre slashed duty on imported bamboo products from 30% to 10%.
  • Unable to compete with cheaper bamboo products – allegedly Chinese routed through Southeast Asian countries – in the domestic market, 99.7% of the 385 bamboo units formed with NMBA’s assistance shut shop.

Entry of NECTAR

• In 2013, the Union Cabinet approved the creation of an autonomous society registered and headquartered in Shillong with a fund allocation of Rs. 292 crore.
• The society was called NECTAR.

But NECTAR was a failure too. Why? 

Reasons: Old wine in a new bottle

• The entire team that made NMBA a failure was rehabilitated in NECTAR without any responsibilities being fixed
• NECTAR’s role, has been minimal except for occasional tours by officials to “use up funds” meant for creating livelihoods and employment
• Soon after its formation, NECTAR began functioning from the same space of the DST Secretary’s office in New Delhi from where the NMBA operated. But DST was apparently unaware that NECTAR operated from the same building
• Inability to shift NECTAR’s base to NE 

Huge market

• Regional trade bodies say the Northeast is crucial for India to tap the estimated $10 billion market potential of bamboo.
• India has the world’s largest fields of bamboo. It grows on nearly 13% of the country’s forest land. The eight North-eastern States – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura – grow 67% of India’s bamboo and have 45% of global bamboo reserves. Nearly 35 species of superior quality bamboos are found in the region.