Each village a story

This newspaper on Friday had a very interesting news-item on the bottom of the front page. It was about members of an NGO distributing saplings of different fruits among residents of a tribal village called Hmarkhawlein in Cachar district of southern Assam. The sole intention behind distributing the saplings is to enhance the economic sustenance and self-reliance of the villagers who belong to the Hmar tribe. Hmarkhawlein, said to be the second largest concentration of Hmars in Assam, is already known for the sweetest and reportedly best quality pineapple plantations cultivated across the Northeastern region, while the colourful community also grows pineapples, papaya, banana, ginger and other seasonal crops. While the latest initiative is supported by NABARD under the Integrated Tribal Development Project, the villagers, known for their hard-working and laborious nature, have been given saplings of banana, areca nut and lemons, so that the promotion of mixed plantations of a variety of fruits will enhance the income of the farmers. This is however not the first time that Hmarkhawlein has occupied space in the news media. It was in 2015 that then Assam Governor PB Acharya visited the village to take stock of the horticultural practices of the villagers, who are particularly known for their collective reluctance to use fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides. That Hmarkhawlein has a history of growing best quality pineapples on the other hand goes back to 1916, when a Welsh Christian missionary called Rev Watkin Roberts alias Joute Herald Brown, had, apart from spreading literacy, also introduced pineapple plantation as a community activity in this village. Last year Hmarkhawlein had not only grown over 20 lakh pieces of pineapples, but had also exported, thanks to Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), several tonnes of the juicy fruit to Dubai. But then Hmarkhawlein is just one among numerous such villages in Assam inhabited by hard-working and laborious people who do not waste valuable time in strikes, road-blockades, donation-seeking and looking for taking benefit of government schemes through fraudulent means with the help of a section of corrupt officers. There are many such villages, each one having an expertise on growing a particular crop, be it paddy, litchi, ginger, orange, mango, lemon or banana. The problem is that their stories often get overshadowed by those of meaningless violence, agitations often built upon false premises, corruption and crime.