Suresh K Pramar

It is a Friday night. In a village, some 40 kilometres from the state capital, Aizawl, over a dozen women, young and old, are loading an Aizawl-bound bus with fresh vegetables. They are small farmers who grow vegetables on their jhum land. They must reach the capital early and reserve a spot for themselves in the Bara Bazaar for the weekly haat. The women will sleep overnight on the pavements of the capital braving adverse weather conditions.

Saturday is the weekly market day in Aizawl and almost the entire town will visit the Bazaar to stock vegetables for the week. Vegetable farmers from the neighbouring villages bring their produce to the market where they are assured of a ready market.

 Forty-five plus Lillianpuii has been selling her produce in Bara Bazaar for well over a decade. Like others she earns between Rs 1500 to Rs 2000 every week. In the earlier years she, like the others, could afford to take the morning bus to the market. Now she must brave the inconveniences of sleeping on the open pavement, arriving in the capital on Friday night if she wants to ensure a spot in the overcrowded Bazaar.

If I do not come in the night and reserve a place for myself I will not have a place to sit. All the available space will be taken up by the regulars from the city itself," she says. Without a sale these small vegetable vendors, who grow their own produce, will face severe economic hardships.

Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, is located on high ground. It is one of the oldest urban centers in the North East. Houses are built on the hill slopes, many of then packed close to each other.

Bara Bazaar, like Aizawl, is over a century old and is located on a hill slope. One has to walk down stepped terraces lined with shops and pavement vendors. In addition to vegetables, fruits and meat products, the Bazaar is an outlet for a variety of products, including used clothes and imported goods. A majority of the shops are owned and operated by women. These women guard their turf jealously and do not allow the village vendors to occupy space near their establishments.

Most of the fresh vegetables and fruits sold in the Bazaar come from the jhum field operated by the small farmers. The small hill farmers, like Lillianpuii grow a wide variety of vegetables. They have been encouraged by the state government’s aggressive campaign to promote self-reliance under the Mizoram Intohdel Policy (MIP). The Policy exhorts the Mizos to produce their own requirements and not to depend on goods from outside the state. The policy wants the farmers to cultivate vegetables for sale and consumption in the state.

Says Linda Chhakchhuak, of Grassroot Options, "Women in Mizoram have taken up the MIP with great zeal. These small hill farmers grow a variety of products like beans, pumpkins, leafy greens, squash, oranges and other fruits." In addition they produce many local vegetables, including a variety of mustard leaf called antam, a must in every Mizo meal.

This is the good part of the story. The sad part is that even while encouraging these small farmers to grow more, the government is doing little to provide them space in the market. For over a decade these small hill farmers, mostly women, have been struggling for space in Bara Bazaar to sell their produce.

Whenever they have found themselves a suitable location, in and around Bara Bazaar, they have been shooed away by the local authorities. These farmers find themselves pitted against the local brokers, known as Kharchawng, who are again mostly women. These city-based brokers have shops in the main market for which they pay a fixed monthly rent.

The Kharchawngs depend on the hill farmers for their supplies. They procure fruits and vegetables at rock bottom prices from the small farmers and thereafter sell the same at a high premium. The women farmers are not against selling their produce to these city traders. What they resent is that they are forced to make distress sales on terms very favourable to the Kharchawng.

The hill farmers are annoyed with the authorities for ignoring their interests. According to one of the farmers, "It is very essential that we sell our produce in the capital. Our economic survival depends on this." Though they have been petitioning the authorities regularly for the past decade and more, no one seems to have any time for them.

According to Ms Zothanpari, President of the United Mizoram Grassroot Women (UMGW), their problems do not receive the attention they deserve because they are women. Speaking to Grassroot Options she said, "Because we are women our problems and needs are not considered as having a major economic impact.

Zothanpari says that the state can grow and prosper only if the villages gain economic strength. She says the government makes grandiose plans but seems to have little or no time for the people at the grassroots.

The government seems obsessed with the needs of the rich and the salaried class," the women complain. "The government asked us to grow vegetables, ginger and other produce. We have done what they have asked us to do. Now they cannot even provide us space to sell our produce. We were initially asked to go to the Directorate of Trade and Commerce to collect money as transport subsidy. When we went to the Directorate we were told that the funds were spent in the Minister’s constituency.

The authorities, and more particularly the Department of Trade and Commerce, does not seem to have time for these people from the grassroots or their requirements. An official from the Department of Trade and Commerce told Linda: "We can’t give them space in our market because they come to sell their produce only once a week and the government will lose revenue. Even if they were provided space they will not be able to sell anything since they don’t produce enough.

The women however contest this. They claim that their produce has increased substantially and the amount of vegetables and fruits arriving in the market has increased manifold over the years. Many of them have said that they have been coming to Bara Bazaar almost on a daily basis.

"The government of Mizoram, a state that claims that more than 80.5 percent of the population depends on agriculture, is yet to respond to the needs of the small farmers…This gives a lie to the government’s much touted policy of supporting self- reliance among the Mizos," says Linda.

Charkha Features