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Desi Ishtyle

Rupees for rats.

By: Karthik :+: Under: Desi Ishtyle, It Happens Only in India
On: ⋅ October 18, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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A rat assassin at work.
Image from the NY Times

It looks like Mumbai is not the only place that has a rat problem.

If you remember, earlier this year, the NY Times had a photo show about “rodent assassins” in India [Via], a profession that would make Mike Rowe quit his job.

Authorities in northeastern India are offering farmers cash for every rat killed in the face of an explosion in the rat population that threatens to devastate crops and plunge the region into a famine, officials said Wednesday.

The cash-for-rats scheme is the latest devised by the Mizoram government to deal with the rapid increase in the rat population caused by a rare flowering of wild bamboo plants in the region over the last three years.

Why is this an issue?

Because the last time this plant flowered, in 1959, there was a famine, which lead to a 30 year rebellion by the tribes. This time around, the government is being more serious and trying to tackle the problem.

In recent years the government has contained the rat population by handing out tons of rat poison and paying farmers to make traps. The army has killed rats.

Experts from Japan, Canada and Australia have been in the region studying the bamboo, to determine why it flowers so irregularly and how that affects the rat population, Lalsiamliana said.

And since all that has not worked, they are out paying Rs.2 for every rat tail that you can bring to the government office.

My grandfather always told me that the Masala Vada worked best as a trap, somebody should contact the Mizoram government about this.

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