The Assam Fiasco
Sometime back in 2008, a Chinese delegation visited to take a first-hand assessment of the Bamboo scenario in Assam. After taking a good stock of the situation the Chinese team went to Delhi to participate in a workshop on Bamboo wherein they learnt further about the Indian bamboo industry and its existing and emerging scenario.
The Chinese delegation's visit was taken up with much hype in Assam, and Chinese propaganda machinery worked to perfection. The newspapers reported “A revolution in bamboo cultivation is in the offing for Assam with a Chinese expert team assuring technology transfer to provide value addition to the product.” The assurance was given to the then Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi by an eight-member Chinese expert team led by technologist Prof Zhang Qi Sheng, who expressed China’s desire for joint collaboration with Assam to revolutionize the bamboo sector.
Assam approximately produces three lakh tons of bamboo stock per annum which is 16% of the country’s produce. Assam has as many as 34 species of bamboo, two-thirds of which are exported to other states.
The euphoria created by the media was unparalleled. One of the leading newspapers quoted Prof Zhang Qi Sheng saying, “There is an immense economic possibility in the bamboo sector given the growing demand for furniture and ornamental products and the Chinese technology, which is one of the best in the world, will definitely bring about a Green Revolution in the state.”
The Chinese team later interacted with local entrepreneurs to explore the venues for joint collaboration in bamboo production. They also visited the Jagiroad paper mill of the Hindustan Paper Corporation and experts from a tissue culture centre to get first-hand information about the quality and the sub-species of bamboo produced in the state. They stated that the Assam and northeastern bamboo is a better species as compared to others and contains strong fiber.
Thereafter, the Chinese went to attend the national seminar in New Delhi and sharpened their knowledge further.
Nothing worthwhile came to India thereafter, and the Assam Dream of riding the Chinese dragon remained a distant dream!
The Chinese did nothing significant after that for the cause of Bamboo in India while they collected all the first-hand information about the techno-socio-economic structure of Bamboo and its potential, the strengths and weaknesses of the bamboo industry in India and all the details of their socio-economic and institutional arrangements. This helped them make themselves better, and within a span of 5-6 years, the Indian share in the global bamboo business started declining.
The technological onslaught by the neighbouring countries proved too much for the Indian Bamboo product supply industries, and they all became almost bankrupt in no time. The reasons for this failure have been discussed in my book ‘Bamboonomics: The Tall Grass Comes of Age’, but the naivety of the Government is really too much, and, in this way, the “first strike advantage” of this Bamboo trade war has gone to China, Vietnam and Myanmar. We did not learn any lesson from all of this, as when a Vietnamese delegation came with
similar ulterior motives, we committed the same mistake again.
So, what has happened due to these two incidents is that the whole of the agarbatti industry of India is under the control of China and Vietnam. The raw materials are completely being imported from these two countries. The repercussion of this is that India, from being a net exporter, has become a net importer of raw materials in the agarbatti industry. And from being no.1 in the world in exporter of agarbatti, India is now in the 3rd position.
Apart from these, thousands of women and men who were employed in the manufacturing units of round bamboo sticks for agarbatti lost their jobs owning to these units getting closed down.
So, it’s imperative that India implement ‘Bamboonomics’ or other such models in as many states as possible to get control of the agarbatti industry back and generate the lost employment.
