Rubber Board of India has big plans for country's northeast

ERJ staff report (BC)

Agartala, India – With Tripura emerging as the second largest rubber growing state in the country after Kerala, the Rubber Board of India is planning to make the region a hub of rubber production, reports the Business Standard.

The Board is reported to consider around 450 000 hectares of land suitable for rubber planting in the country’s northeast.

Tripura has around 100 000 hectares of land under rubber cultivation. Now, the Board has identified 200 000 hectares land in Assam as suitable.

In Tripura, the state government has implemented a "block rubber planting" project to supply rubber seeds to farmers, from which more than 3,200 families are reported to have benefitted. A rubber wood processing plant has been set up in Anandanagar in western Tripura. This is cited as the first in the northeast and the second largest in India.

Rubber cultivator Subhas Debbarma is quoted as commenting: "We used to be very poor, and insurgency was an additional problem for us. Now, after cultivating rubber, we are better off. At present we earn between Rs 3,000-4,000 (€38-51) per month from tapping rubber."

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Full story from Business Standard