Sujit Chakraborty

Agartala: From the guerrilla warfare of the jungles to the battlefields of entrepreneurship.

For the surrendered militants of Tripura, life after farewell to arms is all about accepting a new challenge of business acumen in the social mainstream.

Kamini, Ananta, Shambhu, Nagendra, et al had joined the fight for a “Sovereign Tripura”.

Today they are engaged in a new vocation - honing their skills in mastering the art of handicraft items made of bamboo.

“We left the jungle defying the whip of our bosses. Now we are all happy with our family,” said Kamini Debbarma after meeting Tripura Industrial Development Corporation chairman Pabitra Kar.

Kamini is among hundreds of others who had surrendered recently and are now busy in setting up bamboo-based industrial units with financial assistance from the North Eastern Council (NEC) and state and central governments.

“The NEC had sanctioned Rs3.50 crore for the Cluster Based Livelihood Project to be implemented by the Guwahati-based Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC),” NEC member PP Shrivastava said.

According to him, about 150 surrendered militants and their family members would benefit from the project with the Tripura government providing land in Khumulung, 20 km north of state capital Agartala.

“A variety of bamboobased products are to be produced in this project,” CBTC director Kamesh Salam, said. Militants apart, more than 700 tribal people would be covered under the project, the first of its kind in the northeast India.

“Imparting training on bamboo would go a long way in accelerating and making livelihood project a great success,” said Salam, who represented eastern India in the 8th World bamboo Congress held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in May last year.

Tripura’s industry and commerce minister Jitendra Chowdhury said that the state government would provide all assistance and support to the project to encourage the surrendered militants to start a new life and to motivate those still in the jungles to come to the mainstream.

The CBTC, a non-government organisation, has organised week-long bamboo festival (BAMFEST) here recently to showcase bamboo as the ‘green gold’ for the northeastern region, which has 67% of India’s growing bamboo stock, spread over 3,50,000 hectares in forest alone.

Meanwhile, in the past 10 years, about 1,250 militants from various outfits have surrendered in Tripura. To rehabilitate the surrendered tribal guerrillas, the government has so far provided vocational training to 710 people.

The 18-month long vocational training programme, being provided in four separate training centres across the state, includes car driving and maintenance, carpentry, electrical work, computer use, besides sports and education.

Source : DNA