COMPATIBILITY OF INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE FOR RUBBER PLANTATION DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH EAST INDIA FROM A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE OF KERALA

Abstract

Institutional interventions for agricultural development of the backward Northeastern region of India have been a prerogative for the Central government and the respective state governments for long. Various national and state agricultural development agencies, especially the commodity boards have been constantly engaged in the development of agriculture in the region. Among the commodity boards, the interventions by the Rubber Board have been quite significant in terms of social and economic impacts and the entire NER is emerging as the ‘Hub of rubber production’ in the country accounting for 18.62 percent of the total area and 6.05 percent of the total production. The phenomenal growth of rubber plantation areas in the NE region was mainly due to the policy and institutional interventions by the Rubber Board and other state agencies in the NER, which was triggered by two major reasons, viz., (a) the ever increasing domestic demand for natural rubber from the manufacturing sector (dominated by tyre industry); and (b) the saturation of agro-climatically suitable lands in the traditional regions, especially, Kerala. Moreover, from a social development perspective, the promotion of rubber cultivation in the NER has been considered to have greater impacts in terms of rehabilitating the erstwhile shifting cultivators in the region and thereby leading to their social and economic empowerment. In the backdrop of the institutional interventions by the Rubber Board in the wide-scale promotion of rubber cultivation in the NER, the present paper makes a critical examination of the compatibility and adaptability of the Kerala model of institutional interventions for rubber development in the specific context of the NER. If we examine the trajectory of development of rubber plantations in Kerala under the institutional interventions spearheaded by the Rubber Board, it emerges that the Board had promoted a system of rubber production that was highly oriented towards monoculture without considering the crop promotion from an agriculture system perspective. The paper further argues that given the agro-ecological diversity and the specific socioeconomic, ethnic and institutional settings as well as the pattern of livelihoods followed, the institutional interventions for rubber development in the NER should have an integrated and holistic approach, so as to minimise the damages caused to the fragile agroecosystems of the region. Replication of the rubber based monoculture as widely promoted in the traditional regions, especially, Kerala to the NER, can be a cause of conflict with the pre-existing as well as coexisting agricultural production (including food crops) practices/ farm integrated livelihood systems. Moreover, the institutional makeover, including infrastructure support of the Rubber Board in the region also require major restructuring to evolve an integrated approach towards development or rubber along with promotion of other farm livelihood and rubber integrated agro-forestry systems. Dedicated trials for mixed cropping in the lines of the rubber based integrated farming systems as exist in Thailand and Indonesia may be adopted with better networking and collaborations between the various line departments and similar developmental institutions of the state and the central governments.