Bamboo summit in Mumbai to bring state’s bamboo policy before investors

Maharashtra Governor Jishnu Dev Varma, Rajasthan Governor Haribhau Bagde and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis are listed for the inaugural function, along with Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Ajit Pawar. Ministers holding the agriculture, forest and industries portfolios are also expected to attend.

The idea behind the summit is straightforward. Maharashtra’s cabinet cleared the Bamboo Industry Policy 2025 on 14 October last year. The policy sets out what the state wants from bamboo: Rs 50,000 crore in investment, more than five lakh jobs and fifteen bamboo industrial clusters. It provides for a venture fund of Rs 300 crore and a project of Rs 4,271 crore backed by the Asian Development Bank, and it requires thermal power stations to replace five to seven per cent of their coal with bamboo biomass. Farmers who plant bamboo get a subsidy of Rs 7.04 lakh per hectare.

The summit is the initiative of Pasha Patel, Chairman of the Maharashtra State Agricultural Price Commission and Executive Chairman of the Chief Minister’s Task Force on Environment and Sustainable Development. He has spent more than a decade arguing that a crop grown on poor land can answer two problems at once: the farmer’s income and the state’s carbon footprint.

“For years I have been told bamboo is a forest product, a craft, a fence. On 27 September in Mumbai we will show that bamboo is steel, bamboo is cement, bamboo is fuel, bamboo is a carbon credit,” Patel said ahead of the summit. “The Chief Minister has given Maharashtra a bamboo industrial policy. This summit is where the policy meets the investor.”

He said no other state had gone this far. “Fifteen bamboo clusters, a Rs 50,000 crore investment target, five lakh jobs. When Brazil decided on ethanol, the world followed. When Maharashtra decides on bamboo, India will follow. That is the message of this summit.”

The programme has seven sessions under the title “India’s Bamboo Vision 2047,” covering construction, biomass energy, carbon credits, farm incomes and rural employment. The day ends with a dialogue among chief executives and a policy roundtable that is to adopt a “Mumbai Declaration on Bamboo Economy.” A bamboo exhibition, an investment forum and the Bamboo Excellence Awards are part of the event. Speakers are expected from the Union government, NITI Aayog, the National Bamboo Mission, the Asian Development Bank, UNDP and FAO, besides company heads, architects and bamboo experts from abroad.

For Maharashtra, the interest in bamboo is practical. It grows on land that yields little else, it can be cut year after year without replanting, and it has buyers in three industries at once: construction, power and paper. Whether that translates into money on the ground is what the organisers want answered on Sunday.

About Phoenix Foundation Sanstha: Phoenix Foundation Sanstha is a non-governmental organisation based in Latur district, Maharashtra, founded in 2008 under the chairmanship of Pasha Patel. It works among farmers, rural youth and drought-affected families across Marathwada.

Issued by Phoenix Foundation Sanstha, Latur

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