SILCHAR, March 17— Shifting cultivation, which is popularly known as jhum cultivation, is one of the best agricultural practices of the world, admitted Arup Rai, a specialist in this field and an assistant soil conservation officer of North Cachar Hills district, while talking to this correspondent, and said that it is a very cheap mode of cultivation because there is no need of using any artificial fertilizer and irrigation system and a farmer can produce 30 -35 items of kitchen vegetables through it.
He is in favour of continuing the jhum cultivation in the hills and requested the jhumias to do it scientifically. For this, Rai had developed a new scientific technology two years ago named Modified Scientific Shifting Cultivation Technology (MOSSCULT). This concept was then supported by the International fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a non-governmental organization (NGO) funded by the United Nations Organization (UNO), which sanctioned funds for their North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to experiment the newly developed concept for a period of five years.
Jhum, the slash and burning system of cultivation, has been practised by the Hill people of north-eastern region comprising Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura states and it has been described as one of the oldest systems of cultivation dating back to the Neolithic period. Jhum has a major impact on the environment in the tropics and sub-tropics leading to habitat fragmentation and replacement of primary forests by the secondary forests. Jhum cultivation in responsible for large-scale destruction of forests, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, reduction in crop yield, lowering of groundwater level and acceleration in the rates of sedimentation in rivers and reservoirs downstream. It is deeply related with the socio-cultural and economic life of the tribes.
Arup Rai had developed this technology from his long experiences in hill farming taking the idea from two schemes namely, Sloping Area Land Technology (SALT) and the Mizoram New Method of cultivation (MNMC), which requires to fill up the affected area with nutrients by fixing the atmosphere nitrogen into the soil and to restore the equilibrium of the soil with a provision of natural forest cover on the ridgeline of the watershed areas.
Elaborating on the technology, he informed that it has been designed to meet four different needs of the Hill farmers: MOSSCULT-1— for simple traditional crop with hedgegrows; MOSSCULT-2— for simple agro-livestock land using; MOSSCULT-3— for sustainable agro-forestry land using and MOSSCULT-4— for small agro-fruit livelihood needs. Rai said that afforestration on the top of the hill is the first step in this technology. And in the second step, national grazing by the domestic animals under the forests is necessary. The stool and urine passed by these animals during grazing are to be collected in the small polythene bags and later the cow-dung and urine are to be distributed in the small drains on the hill through bamboo ducts as natural fertilizer for the growth of the plants. To fix nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) and essential nutrients in the soil, the jhumias can cut and burn the leguminous plants (specially peas and beans) after every two years. The conservation of rainwater and subsequent siltation in the hills is one of the major steps in the early period of the starting of the project, he added.
This new technology has been experimentally started in two Zeme Naga people-dominated villages in North Cachar Hills namely, Hereilo and Tungjee on the bank of river Jiri bordering Kohima district of Nagaland and Tamenglong district of Manipur under the Himanki Integrated wasteland development Project (HIWDP) with the financial assistance from the Union Ministry of Rural Development. Arup Rai, who is the team leader of HIWDP, said that the Zeme Naga people have accepted this technology of jhum cultivation and the socio-economic condition of these people have also been remarkably improved. As these hill people are habituated in shifting cultivation, it will take time to change their mentality of shifting and the main aim of this newly developed technology is to control shifting, Rai said. Rai’s view is that the traditional cultural heritage of the ethnic groups related to shifting cultivation should be preserved and it should be done scientifically. He worried about the shortening of jhum cycle and said that in this technology there is no need of shifting from one hill to another for cultivation and for this, jhumias are getting enough time for other works also. Rai informed that after the successful implementation of the technology among Zeme Nagas, the Briete, another tribe of NC Hills, is also taking interest in it.