The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has decided to invest Rs 103 crore to take care of the problem of bamboo flowering in the North-East.The steering committee of the Ministry reviewed the action plan to address the gregarious flowering of muli bamboos, that occurs once every four years. The states that are affected are Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya.The flowering causes a range of problems from explosion in the population of rodents—that end up devouring agricultural crops—to people dependant on bamboo being deprived of their livelihood. The problem is so serious that the Planning Commission is also likely to address it.The state forest departments’ estimates show the flowering is expected to take place over 11,980 sq km. The Rain Forest Research Institute in Jorhat—under the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education—has estimated that gregarious flowering will occur around 18,000 sq km in Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur and parts of Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya. In 1959, gregarious flowering of one type of bamboo was followed by severe famine in Mizoram. In the late 1970s there was an explosion in the rodent population after gregarious floweringin Mizoram.
