Impact of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act on Rubber Block Plantation Scheme in Tripura

Among the various promotional schemes targeted for the promotion of rubber in Tripura, Block Plantation Scheme (BPS) has been introduced exclusively for the rehabilitation of scheduled tribes and scheduled castes. BPS is a comprehensive scheme with the characteristic features of group/community approach in all spheres of operations up to primary processing and marketing and family labour participation as wage labour during the immature phase of the plantations spanning six years. However, there has been a distortion in the uninterrupted supply of family labour to the scheme in the recent past due to growing popularity of employment opportunities under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) programme, which may eventually lead to a prolongation of immature phase and adversely affect the uniform and healthy growth of the rubber plants. These factors in turn could affect the overall rubber yield and so suitable policies needed to be evolved to ensure adequate and timely availability of family labour to immature rubber plantation. One of the options could be the inclusion of the developmental works required for the immature rubber plantations under the MGNREGA projects by the State Government of Tripura