Check smuggling of areca nuts from Myanmar, get votes: Mizoram farmers

Manning a “check-gate” at Zamuang on northern Mizoram’s border with Assam for 12 hours in turns takes some quality time away from their areca nut plantations for Biakdika and four others. It is a small price to pay, they say, in the battle to protect their livelihoods from a threat smuggled in through the State’s southern and south-eastern border with Myanmar – dried areca nuts from Southeast Asia.

MAMIT (MIZORAM)

Manning a “check-gate” at Zamuang on northern Mizoram’s border with Assam for 12 hours in turns takes some quality time away from their areca nut plantations for Biakdika and four others. It is a small price to pay, they say, in the battle to protect their livelihoods from a threat smuggled in through the State’s southern and south-eastern border with Myanmar – dried areca nuts from Southeast Asia.

The gate set up by the Hachhek Areca Nut Farmers’ Association (HANFA) to ensure no vehicle carrying smuggled dried areca nut to Assam and elsewhere in India is also a message for whichever party forms the government in Mizoram after the November 7 elections: set up similar checkpoints along the 510-km Mizoram-Myanmar border to not let dried areca nuts enter the country illegally.

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Zamuang is about 50 km from Mamit, the headquarters of northern Mizoram’s Mamit district. Members of the HANFA, in coordination with the local authorities, have set up another such “check-gate” at Tuidam on the State’s border with Tripura, about 30 km away.

“Dried areca nuts, which attract 100% import duty the legal way, have been smuggled in from Myanmar over the past few years but areca nut farmers in Mizoram started feeling the pinch when the Assam government imposed restrictions on the entry of areca nuts about two years ago to protect its farmers,” HANFA secretary Kanan Lalhlimawma told The Hindu.

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