Centre forms advisory group to boost bamboo industry

Nagpur: In a bid to promote the bamboo industry, the Union ministry of rural development has constituted an advisory group to accelerate the growth of the sector.
The committee is represented by leading stakeholders from the bamboo industry, entrepreneurs, researchers, educationists, not-for-profit representatives, farmers, technologists, scientists, and policymakers. Experts in the field have welcomed the move.
“The Centre has taken another landmark step to harness the potential of the bamboo popularly known as green gold,” said Sanjeev Karpe, managing director of Konkan Bamboo & Cane Development Center. Karpe has been nominated to the advisory group.
The mandate of the committee is to advise on the bamboo plantation, technologies for value addition to bamboo, skill development in bamboo-based processing and market linkages.
Though late in the game compared to China and southeast Asia countries, the Indian government has consistently taken steps to promote the bamboo industry in the country. In 2017, the government freed bamboo from the exploitative provisions of the colonial Indian Forest Act, of 1927 to ensure that local tribals and farmers can reap the benefits of this green gold.
“Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet, is drought resistant, can be grown on wastelands and on farm bunds, requires input costs only in the first year, but gives perennial income from the third year onwards,” Karpe said.
Another member of the group Pasha Patel of Transform Rural India Foundation (TRIF), said that bamboo is no longer a poor man’s timber. “Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Kempe Gowda international airport which has used bamboo as the key raw material for building the terminal,” Patel said.
“Bamboo has been used not only to manufacture construction components but also interior accessories. This will definitely inspire the Indian industry to invest in bamboo-based product manufacturing,” Pasha added.
Karpe says a Thane-based bamboo firm has successfully completed the designing, manufacturing, and installation of ceiling panels covering 40,000 sqft at a luxury resort used by players of the FIFA Football World Cup. The firm has also been recognized globally for its work on other projects like the bamboo pod fine dining restaurant constructed at the Waldorf Astoria resort in the Maldives.
Mutha Industries, based out of Agartala in Tripura, is currently installing bamboo flooring in the new Parliament building for the Central Vista project in Delhi, covering 9 lakh sqft.
“A single bamboo plant can release up to 320 kg of oxygen per annum and absorbs 30% more CO2 from the atmosphere than other trees. While only 60 hectares of bamboo plantation which will regrow, would need to be harvested to build 1,000 houses of bamboo, building the same amount with timber would require 500 hectares of forest cover,” Karpe said.