Transforming Northeast’s Bamboo Economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to buy bamboo products from the Northeast region is strategically important as it advances the country’s climate action goal by promoting an environment-friendly, renewable and low-carbon material even as it strengthens the livelihoods of bamboo artisans. The government and market players extending handholding support to the traditional bamboo artisans to diversify the range of their products can fully unlock the region’s bamboo economy. The North East Cane and Bamboo Development Council (NECBDC) estimates that the bamboo handicraft and lifestyle sector is valued at Rs 2,500 crore with rapid e-commerce growth. The NECBDC’s document ‘Towards a Sustainable Bamboo Economy: Investment Prospects and Pathways 2025’ highlights that women constitute over 40% of bamboo artisans in the region, engaged in handicrafts, furniture and household items, but they struggle to scale up their enterprises due to lack of design inputs, machinery access and markets. The business model proposed by NECBDC for women-led bamboo clusters offers a significant potential of generating direct employment of 200-300 women per cluster and an additional 400-500 indirect employments in supply chain and distribution for women-led enterprises engaged in making handcrafted furniture, utility products, lamps, baskets, lifestyle accessories, etc. As each of these clusters will require capital investment to the tune of Rs 1-2 crore, the business model needs clarity on the flow of the required fund. The women’s SHGs to be mobilised for these clusters can be motivated to pool various financial assistance provided by the government to the groups to raise the working capital which the NECBDC estimates at Rs 20-30 lakh for each cluster. The women’s SHGs will be keen to channelise their savings into the creation of this working capital only when they are assured of a steady market for their bamboo products and remunerative prices for all items. Major e-commerce market players can be roped in for viable market linkage and making investments for the development of the supply and distribution chain so that women artisans can concentrate on quality control and design innovation that meets the expectation of modern consumers. While the Prime Minister’s personal appeal will motivate the consumers to patronise the Northeast artisans, their actual purchase decisions will primarily be driven by their individual choices and preferences. Gaining an accurate sense of market sentiment is crucial for women artisans’ groups to formulate effective business strategies. Lessons must be drawn from the Common Facility Centre created for artisans of various handicraft items, which is underutilised or unutilised due to weak market linkage and the lack of effective business strategy. This calls for revisiting the skill-development initiatives in the bamboo sector to assess if the artisans, especially women artisans, have acquired the competencies demanded by modern consumer markets. The NECBDC’s own assessment highlights a grim picture: even though the region has a large bamboo artisan base involving lakhs of individual artisans, only 5–10% have exposure to modern bamboo technologies. This ground reality demands prioritizing the establishment of more skill development and training centres for the bamboo sector in the region, as proposed in the document, to fill up the gap and push the artisan base to move up from the traditional subsistence-scale business model to industry-scale engagement. A steady supply of affordable electricity to common facility centres of these clusters will be crucial for commercial-scale production. Availability of raw bamboo at affordable prices remains crucial for the sustainability of women-led bamboo clusters, as price volatility of raw materials can erode profitability, leading to an increase in prices of final value-added products, creating negative market sentiments and potentially dampening consumer demand. As e-markets provide wider options for the online consumers to choose from, sustaining favourable market sentiments for bamboo products from the region is critical to ensure the long-term viability of the bamboo artisans’ business ventures. Exemption of bamboo grown in non-forest areas from the definition of tree, through an amendment of the Indian Forest Act pushed by the central government in 2017, created new opportunities for the communities to increase production of raw bamboo required to cater to the rising demand of bamboo artisans and bamboo-based industries. Boosting bamboo production through agroforestry and community bamboo nurseries in the region remains pivotal to closing the country’s wide demand-supply gap and reducing import dependence on China and Vietnam for meeting domestic demand for bamboo products. The proposed Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded project ‘Inclusive and Sustainable Bamboo Value Chain Development in Northeastern India’, which envisages ‘well-developed, commercially orientated value chains in Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland’, can be expected to position the region as a contributor in reducing India’s import reliance for the bamboo industry. Apart from the increase in income of primary bamboo growers in the region, an increase in production of raw and processed bamboo within the region will significantly support the livelihoods of traditional bamboo artisans by taking away their worries about availability of raw material. The region is on the threshold of economic transformation for its bamboo artisans.