Guwahati: Close on the heels of the Central government's announcement to make north-eastern states an oil palm hub of the country, Lok Sabha MP from Assam Pradyut Bordoloi wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi raising his concerns about the plan.
Opposing the plan to turn the north-eastern states into oil palm hubs, Bordoloi said that while he appreciates the government's plan to reduce the country's dependency on edible oil imports, the government should not make the effort at the cost of the environment and particularly if it erodes the rich biodiversity of the northeast region.
Quoting the experts on the subject, he said that while oil palm cultivation may be beneficial for the short term as means of income generation it is not a sustainable long term strategy. "We have seen that some South Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have witnessed devastating effects of monocultural oil palm cultivation on biodiversity, depletion of water supply and soil degradation due to substantial chemical input requirement," Bordoloi said in his letter.
Stressing that there is a need to carry out a scientific study before initiating the oil palm plantation, Bordoloi said that it would also affect the small and marginal farmers. He said that a plan to have large scale oil palm cultivation in Assam was rejected during the 1980s as a recipe for ecological disaster.
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