A Midsummer Sweetness
Pineapples of Hmarkhawlien
It is around 4 am and dawn is yet to break. A pregnant silence veils the hills of Hmarkhawlien in Lakhipur Block of Cachar district. You need to stare deep in the mist to see the blurred silhouettes of people walking up the hills with cane baskets and daos (a long blade knife). The better part of their day will be spent under the open skies, but it is on the ground that their eyes are fixed. Their walk is over uneven terrain and destination, an area they have altered to their advantage.
They are the workers in pineapple plantations, who prefer to start work early when the weather is still cool. This is because the work of weeding, trimming, pruning and cleaning and later during the season, reaping the harvest, is intensive and time-consuming. The labour that is required is rigorous.
The plantations in Hmarkhawlien was founded in 1932 by a Welsh Baptist pastor, James Roberts. He brought the saplings from Tripura and performed farming experiments and was able to enhance its sweet flavour. And now the aroma of pineapples of Hmarkhawlien is very different from the rest; their sugar content ranges between 16 and 18 per cent – an all-time-high in Northeast India. Spread over 1,500 hectares of land, the pineapple plantations have an average production of 40,000 metric tonnes during the season from May till July every year.
During season, the people are busy picking their harvest. The young and the old carry cane and bamboo baskets to ferry the pineapples from the plantations. It is not an easy job, but this has been the practice since the time Pastor Roberts introduced the fruits to the fertile undulating terrain. The harvest sustains many families whose aspirations are growing in a rather different world than the one that the Pastor had seen.
For the approximately 5,500 inhabitants of Hmarkhawlien and the nearby fruit orchards of Labankhal, Molong and Sonbari, pineapple cultivation is the main source of the economy. It is their cash crop that brings in a sustainable income. Their dedication to adhere only to an eco-friendly, organic means of cultivation sans any use of fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides makes the product much in demand for exports.
In July 2019 the sweet bounty of the pineapples of Hmarkhawlien reached Dubai, when a consignment of 15 metric tonnes of pineapples was exported for the first time by the Department of Horticulture, Assam. It was facilitated by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India.
Pineapple, though originally a native to Caribbean and South America, is one of the largely grown fruits in North-eastern States of India and the region produces more than 40 percent of the total pineapple of the country. The 90-95 per cent of the organic, Queen variety of pineapple grown in Assam is from the district of Cachar and hills of KarbiAnglong and Dima Hasao.
But success in cultivating the fruits is not enough to augment the people’s income. What the region requires are cold storage units and a dedicated transport system to store and carry the pineapples to the markets. Ease of bank loans with subsidised interest rates will also be a boon to the farmers.
I got some glimpses of the plantations and the people engaged in those during an assignment for the UNDP, Northeast India. The experience was an eye opener – a pastor from Europe foraying into Assam, introducing a fruit with its roots in South America, which today is sold in India and the Middle East. The world seems to have become a little smaller.