Turning water weeds to money
In 25-year-old Pallavi Baruah’s homeland, the Brahmaputra river island of Majuli, making a living is as vulnerable as the place itself. Farmers grow chickpeas, green leafy vegetables and rice, but farm tracts can “disappear” overnight.
Two braided channels of the vast river encircle this island in eastern Assam, in a deathly grip, systematically knocking off land, mostly loose soil, from its fragile shores. This process of massive erosion has been going on for decades, causing the island to continuously shrink. Many of Bora’s co-inhabitants have seen their land melting away into the Brahmaputra.
Seasonal flooding routinely inundates crops and homes in this important religious centre of Vaishnavite monasteries. Baruah’s landless father, a carpenter, is old and incapable of doing much.
In the lakes and lagoons of Majuli, like in the rest of Assam, water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic weed, is considered by locals as a big nuisance. Rowing boats through them becomes difficult. Thickets of hyacinth usually grow across ponds and fisheries. They also don’t let sunlight in, which hampers fishing.
In this battered island, hyacinths are now being hailed as a saviour, thanks to one man’s efforts to turn this weed into a source of wealth and rural income. About 135 women from below poverty line (BPL) households now farm hyacinths in lakes and lagoons to use their stems as a virtually cost-free raw material. Their products: fruit baskets, flower vases, mats, stationery, hats and small furniture.
Kabya Jyoti Bora, a 47-year-old veterinarian, started farming hyacinths in 2013, after training under the agri-clinics and agri-business centre scheme from the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals, Guwahati, in 2010.
Bora then formed Association for Livelihood Promotion and Entrepreneurship Development. With technical and financial support from North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Limited, Bora now trains disadvantaged women to make a variety of products from hyacinths.
The technology is utterly simple: the stems of hyacinths are sun-dried and flattened through portable iron press.
The hay coloured dehydrated stalks become strong to be woven into virtually anything. Thermocol blocks are used as moulds. They can even be used in handlooms. Before taking his project to Majuli, Bora trained 100 low-caste rural women in Kamrup in the art of making bags, office folders and files from water hyacinth. In Majuli, the rural artisans now sell their products to foreign tourists and at local fairs. “Most of the 135 women like me make ₹3,000 a month,” Baruah says. Bora, the agriprenuer, says ₹3,000 is “like ₹30,000” for poor households here. “They have basic needs, you see.” Bora is now in talks with Majuli’s district administration that could transform hyacinth farming and products made from it into a cottage industry. “The additional deputy commissioner says his office will source all their stationary needs from these women.” Assam’s water hyacinth farms are turning agricultural waste into wealth.
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