If you are wondering if the whiff of your cardamom and the fire of the cherry pepper are coming all the way from the spice route down south, it is time to gulp the fact that they are all coming from the tiny eastern Himalayan State of Sikkim. Yes, Sikkim produces 95 per cent of the country’s large cardamoms now along with other superfoods like ginger, turmeric and garlic.
Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling’s Sikkim Organic Mission has now widened the scope of the organic market, which was considered elitist, into an affordable mass choice, and is set to help him reach his target of “complete organic agriculture status” by 2015. By that time expect your morning breakfast to be Sikkim-made what with organic eggs, milk and meat expected to dot your shop shelves. Salad vegetables like tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce and zucchinis are already a hit as are fruits like Mandarin oranges and bananas. In fact, Sikkim supplied 30 metric tonnes of ginger to Kerala, even sending it to the Netherlands, and exported seabuckthorn concentrate to France.
“At the moment we are trying to meet the demands of nearby states and our local market. The demand is immense but we will be able to meet it only after 2015,” Mr Chamling told The Pioneer. In fact, the Chief Minister is now taking the organic movement to the next level. “Now that our people have specialised in organic farming techniques and practices, they can give valuable tips to people from other parts of the country to show that environment-friendly methods are sustainable. We are following a model of capacity-building and setting up livelihood schools in all districts so that unemployed youth can become farm supervisors in the initial stages and service providers in the later stages. What use is a model if it cannot be popularised and made self-sufficient?” he asked.
In fact, Mr Chamling is turning the raison d’être of the tourism economy on its head. “Tourism is the engine of our economy. We are well-endowed with nature that has made us a hub of adventure tourism and our Buddhist circuit is quite well-known. But I want Sikkim to be neat, clean and green where living with Nature will be benchmarked as a new experience. We intend to promote a concept called organic tourism which will include farm stays, green hotels and nature retreats,” he added. A new airport at Pakyong, around 20 km from Gangtok, is likely to be completed by 2014 and will take care of the tourist rush that is expected from an emergent interest in agri-tourism and biodiversity hotspots globally.
“As a hill state that cannot have huge factories, I thought I should pursue innovative agriculture that would reap benefits. Organic farming is about high value and low volumes. Besides, we make manure too. At one shot it has improved the health of the people, increased their purchasing power, boosted the nutrient value of the soil and made us environment-friendly. It took me around five years to convince people to take to this practice. More than the locals, it took me a while to convince the agriculture officers,” said Chamling. About 50,000 hectares are already under organic farming. The use of fertiliser is already down to 0.3 per cent. The State Government has been withdrawing subsidies on fertilisers from as early as 2003.
The Sikkim model is based on synchronising traditional agricultural practices — including crop rotation, vermi composting and biological pest control — with modern technologies to ensure reduction or total elimination of chemical inputs. Sikkim has also started propagating the use of bio-fertilisers in a big way, using native strains of bacteria. Azolla is a live free floating water fern which lives in symbiotic association with a nitrogen-fixing blue green algae BGA. It has great potential as green manure in lowland paddy cultivation and is capable of providing a minimum of 30 kg nitrogen per hectare to a maximum of 60 kg per hectare. Studies have shown that organic fruits and vegetables have had a greater concentration of antioxidants as a result.
Chamling’s organic model is expected to boost the State’s floriculture sector, the next big thing that is expected to compete with the flower markets in the Netherlands. “This is a lucrative business as our geo-climatic factors are ideal for growing flowers of every exotic variety.
People from other States can also participate in these ventures. Unlike the Netherlands, we cultivate flowers in a natural environment. Therefore, it costs them more to grow them synthetically while the quality is not as good as ours. They wilt away in a week while ours can remain fresh up to a month in a conditioned environment. We organise an international flower show every four years and a national flower show every year. This year 30 countries participated,” he said.
Sikkim boasts of around 5,000 species of flowering plants, orchids and rhododendrons being the main draw. Several nurseries in the State have been experimenting successfully in creating new breeds of orchids by grafting and tissue culture methods. The flowers from Sikkim are currently being lapped up by hosipitality and corporate majors all across the country.
The green philosophy is so embedded in the life of Sikkimese that every Environment Day on June 5, everybody, mostly schoolchildren, devotes 10 minutes to planting saplings across the State. “If we were to replicate this across the country, we would be restoring our green cover much before than expected,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chamling is expanding his vision towards enhancing the human resources of his State by trying to ensure everybody gets their basic right to a good health. The Comprehensive and Total Checkup for Healthy Sikkim (CATCH) programme was started as a preventive measure rather than cure, the idea being to screen the population of the State on an annual basis and counsel them on a healthy lifestyle free. There is a databank of citizens’ health records which is updated. And should a disease be detected the Government funds a further referral through its tie-ups with specialised medical institutions in big cities. “We have covered more than 95 per cent of the population this financial year. If we detect illness, we treat the patient at hospitals in Sikkim. If he is serious, we even send him to super speciality hospitals outside the State. No State other than ours gives such a facility to its residents.” Looks like social security is next on Chamling’s agenda, poised as he is to becoming the country’s longest serving Chief Minister.