From rxpgnews.com
'Cultivate rubber, shun insurgency' is mantra for northeast
By IANS,
Mar 9, 2007 - 6:13:28 PM
Guwahati, March 9 - The central government has come up with a new weapon to fight insurgency in the northeast - encouraging youths to take up rubber cultivation on a large scale, instead of arms, to be actors in the development of the region.
'Rubber cultivation could be a tool for fighting insurgency as people could be stopped from joining militant groups if they are engaged in productive farming,' Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here Friday.
'Now with several downstream rubber industries coming up in places like Tripura, the potential is tremendous,' the minister told journalists here.
Ramesh was earlier addressing a meeting in Guwahati along with Mani Shankar Aiyar, minister for development of northeastern region -, with heads of the Coffee Board, the Rubber Board, the Tea Board, the Spices Board, and the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Exports Development Authority.
The meeting was aimed at making the northeastern region a major economic zone by boosting the production of rubber, coffee, tea, spices and upgrading the food-processing sector. The northeast accounts for 9.5 percent of India's total rubber production.
According to estimates, the northeast has potential for rubber cultivation in about 450,000 hectares of land of which just about 13 percent is currently under natural rubber plantations.
'Our plan now is to double rubber production in the northeast within five to seven years time,' the commerce minister said.
The region also has potential for coffee, with Nagaland and Mizoram growing the beans in about 5,000 hectares of land.
'We shall be opening by next month a coffee curing factory in Kolasib in Mizoram where five tonnes per month of processed coffee could be made,' the minister said.
The government has also announced the setting up of four agricultural economic zones in the northeast - two in Sikkim, and one each in Assam and Tripura - besides opening cold storage facilities in five airports in the region.
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