Rubber cultivation a dividend-paying self-employment avenue

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Dec 1: Many of his peers have ventured out of the State in search of livelihood, but Dambaru Deka of Jagiroad had always believed that there were greener pastures in Assam.

Deka’s rubber garden at 13th Mile at Sopur on the outskirts of the city is now an iconic of entrepreneurship. Dambaru had started off his career 17 years ago, as an employee in a private rubber farm. A keen learner, he soon picked up the entire process of making rubber sheets from a technician at the farm. Soon, he became a partner in the farm and started to produce and market rubber sheets.

“The farm was started on a 10-bigha hilly land with 300 rubber trees. Now I have owned more small farms in the area,” Deka says.

“Initially, I didn’t have much money to start the business. But I worked hard and took immense care of the trees and collected raw rubber. Slowly, the production increased and our customer base widened,” Deka says.

“We started to sell it to customers. Now, in the season of collecting raw rubber from rubber trees, which started in May-June month and ends in mid-January every year, I collect 200-500 grams from a tree a day. Among the 300 trees in the farm, I collect from 150 trees repeatedly and collect  15- 20 kg raw rubber a day. It takes five to seven days to make the fil product from raw, including mixing raw rubber with water and acid, keeping them in trays to keep them firm, removing of water from the rubber sheets, giving sunlight till proper time, smoking them to become fil product and after that, I can sell the products to customers. There is no much investment in taking care of the trees except the fertilizers and other products like acid in producing the rubber sheets, it only needed two machines to remove the water from the rubber sheets completely and give them an equal size.”

Deka later said: “From planting a rubber tree, it takes seven years to start the collection of raw rubbers from the tree and till 40 years, one can collect rubbers from a tree. Therefore, there is only one time investment in this business, including the machines and other equipments to collect and make the fil products. There is also good demand of these rubber sheets in market, as one quintal of rubber sheets can be sold from Rs 6,000 to Rs 10,000. There are two types of trees, slipping and budding trees between which, more rubber can be collected from the budding trees.”

Deka also said: “In these years, I have taken care of these trees and also earning money to run my family through collecting and selling products to various customers. It’s a seasol business and so, people can also run some other business simultaneously. Now, the profit is divided between me and the origil owner of the farm in equal halves. One can start this business to get good profit, which also helps to balancing the environment without affecting it. It’s a two-way profit which can give both money and green atmosphere to save our environment.”