By Imkong Walling
There are oil exporting nations, and there are oil importing nations. Some countries, like India or China, either have no naturally occurring reserves, or whatever known reserves they have do not meet their domestic requirement, and there are those that have yet to strike oil. There is no puzzle there.
Juxtapose the two countries’ oil situation with Nagaland’s romance with pig meat. Despite a fabled appetite for pork, the state’s domestic pig production can barely meet 50 percent of the demand.
At 7.97 kg/year in 2018-19, Nagaland has the highest consumption of pork per capita compared to the other states. It translated into 15,770 metric tonnes out of the total 32,280 metric tonnes of the state’s meat production, or almost 50 percent of the state’s meat basket. At one point, in 2014-15, pork accounted for over 91 percent of the total meat produced in the state. In 2018-19, the state consumed more pork than the country’s per capita meat basket of 4.4 kg/year.
These figures are from a paper titled, ‘Balance sheet of pork production and consumption in Nagaland: Implications for strengthening of pork value chain,’ authored by scientists at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research ICAR, Nagaland Centre, Medziphema, and published in the Indian Journal of Animal Sciences. The 2021 paper noted that half of the state’s demand for pork is met by imports of live pigs, placing emphasis on revamping production technology, strengthening marketing infrastructure, and increasing institutional credit flow to the sector.
While politicians make motivational speeches, the latter of the three, in particular, is where piggery as a gainful business hits a bureaucratic wall in Nagaland. Piggery hopefuls either have to have rich parents, and/or a rich unmarried relative somewhere. If it is neither, the banks are the only option in a place where independent ‘angel investment’ is non-existent.
Now, imagine approaching a bank for a piggery loan. They will hand out a form with a list of criteria that have to be fulfilled. One of the conditions include a requirement for acquiring NOC (No Objection Certificate) from the land-owner on which the applicant have proposed to start the farm, counter-signed by the Village Council chairman and Village Development Board (VDB) secretary, and even the gaonbura.
It practically implies owning land in a rural setting, preferably a village, if anyone wants to become a pig farmer in Nagaland. If the aspiring pig farmer does not own land, the road ends there.
The challenge is not a lack of credit flow. The real issue is red tapism, the hardnosed tactic adopted by the banks making it harder to access even state mandated soft loans. The people are also not without blame for the banks tightening the purse strings. Banks in Nagaland are neck-deep in bad loans, Non-Performing Assets, as they call it. It is the outcome of a system where ghosting the banks after availing a loan or subsidy has become normalised, an accepted tradition.
On one hand, there are the policy-makers harping on ramping up domestic production to exploit a voracious pork-eating culture. On the other, the banks are making it increasingly harder to even avail a ‘Mudra’ loan. Entrepreneurial farmers’ could do with the banks relaxing unwarranted paperwork, not platitude from elected leaders.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
