Patna: The Bihar government has offered livelihood alternatives to farmers who have been surreptitiously cultivating opium to make a fast buck despite the police continuously launching crackdowns on such activities. Police say such cultivation is being funded by the Maoists or the drug mafias.
Authorities said such crops are being continuously grown in southern Bihar’s Gaya district for its strategic locations. While on the one hand the entire areas remain surrounded by hills and forest which allow the farmers to doge the local administration, on the other, they are located along the Grand Trunk road that helps the growers transport the crops with comfortable ease.
Reports said the farmers were engaged in cultivation of traditional crops earlier but of late they have turned to opium cultivation as they find it more lucrative. Officials said the farmers have not only been growing such crops on their own land but also on the lands belonging to the forest department. Over the years, the area of such cultivation has gone up alarmingly. The gravity of the situation can be underlined from the fact that the police destroyed opium crops grown on 467 acres of land last year.
“We destroyed opium crops grown on 467 acres of land in 2020. Our survey conducted by drones has found this year too opium plantation has been done in considerably large areas of land in the same areas,” divisional forest officer Abhishek Kumar told the media on Monday. The official said they were constantly in touch with the villagers asking them to stay away from illegal farming and rather shift to alternative livelihood opportunities to lead a respectable life.
“Under the alternative livelihood opportunity, we have suggested them to grow lemongrass or do honey bee farming which fetch attractive money. We have also tagged them with buyers who will visit the place to buy the oil extracted from lemongrass,” the forest official assed.
Attractive money
The lemongrass oil is sold at Rs600 a litre in the market and, according to experts, an average 480 litres of oil is produced per hectare every year. Honey production also fetches attractive money while the organic certified honey is sold at even Rs1,000 a kilogram.
The officials also told the farmers that a huge share of their income goes to drug mafia since they fund such cultivation but if they go for lemongrass cultivation or honey farming, they will get their full share which will boost their income. Villagers reportedly told the officials that they had been growing opium since they didn’t have any alternative for livelihood.
A narcotic control bureau official said they had chalked out a three-pronged strategy to curb the opium menace. “We are trying to identify farmers growing opium on their private land with the help of GPS and register cases against them. Apart from this, cases will also be registered against the farmers growing the banned narcotics on the forest land,” zonal director of Narcotics Control Bureau, Kumar Manish told the media.
As per the reports, initially the farmers were encouraged to grow opium on their land by the Maoists who faced severe financial crunch after the Indian government imposed demonetisation on November 8, 2016. As a result of demonetisation, all high value Indian currency in the denomination of Rs500 and Rs1,000 went out of circulation overnight. Reports said the demonetisation drive broke the financial backbone of the rebels who later employed various methods to keep their organisation afloat and opium idea was one of them. But of late, drug mafia too have reached out to the villagers to fund the opium cultivation which has alarmed the authorities.
