Plague rats feast as millions face starvation

By Ryys Blakely

MILLIONS of people in India face starvation after a chilling forecast about a plague of rats overrunning a region every half-century appears to have come true.

Millions of tribal families in the state of Mizoram, on the border with Burma and Bangladesh, are struggling to feed themselves after the area was overrun by hundreds of millions of rats -- a phenomenon known as the mautam.

The rodent plague follows the heavy flowering of a local species of bamboo, an event that occurs every 48 years and provides the region's rats with a feast of high-protein foliage.

Once the rats have ravaged the bamboo, they turn on the crops, consuming hundreds of tonnes of rice and maize supplies.

"People do not have food for tomorrow," J. Rochunga, of Poithar village in Lawngtlai, one of the hardest-hit areas, said.

"We are afraid to plant anything because the rats consume everything, even cash crops like oranges and vegetables, pumpkins and chillies."

Survivors of the previous mautam, which heralded widespread famine in 1958, say they remember areas of paddy fields the size of four soccer pitches being devastated overnight.

Villagers forced to abandon their smallholdings and scavenge for food in the jungle are reliving the nightmare.

"My family could starve," Gulsogi, of Bolisora, another village in Lawngtlai, said.

"How long can we forage to survive? We are walking longer into the forest each day to find anything."

Government relief measures such as a bounty of one rupee (2c) per rat tail - an offer that fuelled a cull of about 221,000 rodents in 2006 - have made little impact.

Now, with at least 100,000 people already going hungry, aid workers say the situation will deteriorate as farmers refuse to sow next season's crop until the rats have been eradicated.

"There are clear signs of a crisis unfolding," Mrinal Gohain, of the charity ActionAid, said yesterday.

"Some villages are in a particularly bad shape, with people surviving by foraging in the forest since October last year."

Almost two-thirds of the villages in some areas are now in a state of "serious crisis" as inaccessible terrain and a wider shortage of food hampers aid, officials say.

The mautam is unfolding amid wider concern over South Asia's ability to feed itself as world prices for staple foods soar. The World Bank lobbied India last week to export rice supplies to Bangladesh.

However, Indian officials have their eyes fixed on their home markets, and recently slashed import taxes on rice in an attempt to ease local prices.

Mizoram's desperate farmers are now selling their property, and families that practise slash-and-burn cultivation say they cannot prepare to plant the next crop as long as the rat menace persists.

"The local fishing pond provided seasonal income in our village but now even that is up for sale," one villager told the aidworkers.