Bamboo Industry in India: How can it be developed?

Bamboo Industry in India: How can it be developed?

UPSC General Studies: Paper I: Key Natural Resource: Bamboo

Question: ‘India has the world’s largest natural base of bamboo, yet China controls the world market in this natural resource.’ Outline the uses of bamboo. How has the above situation come to be what it is and how should it be redressed?

Backgrounder: (This is just for the sake of putting things in a perspective and not for the actual answer)

India, not China, is the world’s largest natural repository of bamboo: approximately 11,361 sq.km of it, compared to China’s area of 5,444 sq.km. Most of India’s bamboo is in the north-east, some in Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and in the Western Ghats.

Yet India holds a mere 4% of the world market on bamboo.

China’s innovations in bamboo have certainly been manifold. It controls over 83% of the world market, and has seen its industry grow from $10 billion to a $30 billion turnover industry employing 7.7 million people and reforesting over 3 million hectares of degraded land.

IBNAR: INBAR (International Network for Bamboo and Rattan) is infusing bamboo into five of the Paris Agreement’s 29 clauses through Articles 5, 7, 10, 11 and 12, all dealing in sustainable forestry and renewable energy.

Pointers that will help tackle the above question:

Uses of bamboo

Bamboo’s benefits are immense—it restores degraded soils, is good for afforestation and water conservation and thereby in climate change mitigation. It has myriad uses ranging from high-end construction materials to producing biomass fuel with potential for further products, thereby enhancing not just rural livelihoods but an industry, all contributing to the overall economy.

What’s powered China ahead?

IBNAR India and China: Interestingly, INBAR was founded by an Indian-origin Canadian scientist, Cherla Sastry, in 1983 through Canada’s IDRC (international development research), then having several other Indian “bamboo scientists”. The initiative set up some centres within forestry institutes in India, but got bogged down by “all kinds of parliamentary questions”, said Sastry over the phone, when it came to establishing INBAR in India. “There is continuity in China,” says Sastry, along with cooperation, foresight and their own money.

What’s kept India behind?

Bamboo a tree or a grass? Forest Rights Act of 2006 allows access to NTFPs but still restricts it as an industry. But the Forest Act of 1927 said bamboo was a tree, thus excluding local communities from harvesting bamboo inside protected areas as non-timber forest produce (NTFP). (This provision remains unchanged in 1980 Forest Act.

Lack of cohesive policy: Bamboo is also controlled by the rural development and the agriculture ministries. None of these ministries have as yet a policy that is cohesive to all.

Way Ahead

Adopt state best practices: there has been an environment ministry directive urging states to consider bamboo as an NTFP and a Supreme Court order categorizing bamboo as such, the ambiguity of our current laws has left it to the political will of states to decide. The result of this is a few discrete pockets of success in communities in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Odisha mainly.

Utilize funds from existing schemes: bamboo could be promoted with great effect in the 10 million hectare afforestation scheme under India’s climate change mitigation plans, while the compensatory afforestation management's current funds of Rs 42,000 crore offer even more potential.

Related Article

19.09.16: Gadkari blasts forest officials for corruption (Related to Bamboo in Vidarbha)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/Gadkari-blasts-forest-dept-for-corruption/articleshow/54396164.cms