From Promise to Peril: Unmasking Manipur’s Palm Oil Project

In November 2020, the Chief Agent of Violence of Manipur, N Biren Singh, launched the Oil Palm Project in Manipur, via video conferencing. A year later, the National Mission on Edible Oils-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) scheme was launched in 2021 by Prime Minister Modi. And in the month of May 2022, a symposium to promote oil palm plantation was held in Manipur.

MS Khaidem, who is the consultant of the Oil Palm Mission, Manipur said that the Union Government had given assent to the initiative with an outlay of Rs 11,000 crores for a five-year period. He added that 66,652 hectares of land had been decided as potential areas for the scheme across six districts of the state. The six districts are Imphal West (14,516 hectares), Thoubal (18,475 hectares), Bishnupur (10,389 hectares), Churachandpur (11,662 hectares), Chandel (6,803 hectares) and Ukhrul (4,808 hectares). Manipur will be the 22nd State in India to indulge in palm oil production. Biren Singh maintained that the palm oil cultivation could be an alternative to jhum cultivation and poppy cultivation as palm oil is the highest vegetable oil yielding perennial crop with an effective income generation to farmers and beneficial to the environment as well.

Land for Cultivation
This is where the argument for Palm oil production raises a few eyebrows. In August of 2022, Godrej Agrovet signed three MoUs with Assam, Manipur and Tripura state governments for development and promotion of oil palm cultivation in the region and will be allotted land across the three states.
If the government is hell-bent on providing an income source to farmers, why are big private companies like Godrej given the contract to start mass production of Palm oil? In the case of Manipur pertaining to allocation of land for cultivation, since most of the areas for Palm Oil production lies in Kuki dominated hill districts, one ponders, Did the Manipur(Meitei) government consulted the Hill Area Committee under Art.371(C) before launching the Palm Oil Project?

Ecological effects of Palm oil cultivation
On the question of whether it is “beneficial to the environment”, Is Biren Singh not aware that the palm oil production is a water intensive monoculture which requires around 45,000 litres of water per hectare of land, and hazardous to soil fertility? Moreover, there needs to be a minimum gap of 30 feet in between the trees. Added to the woes palm trees restrict the growth of any other plant/tree along with them which means that there are various ecological drawbacks to these plantations. This is evident from the Mizoram’s model where they have planted trees in 29,000 hectares of land making it one of the biggest players in palm oil production in northeast where due to high water requirement the soil has lost its fertility and resulted in mass deforestation.
What does the law of the land say?

Under Environmental Protection Act,1986 it is mandatory that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Report be prepared for any new project or activity that is likely to have an adverse impact on the environment.

The EIA report must assess the potential environmental impacts of the project and propose measures to mitigate these impacts. KSO Media and Documentation team searched for the said report on the websites of the Ministry of Agriculture and farmer’s welfare, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Manipur’s Department of Agriculture and Manipur State Pollution Control Board but it was nowhere to be found.

On 13th September,2023 the Directorate of Agriculture (Govt. of Manipur) made an advertisement inviting eligible applicants for contractual appointment of different posts under the Centrally sponsored Scheme of NMEO-OP, Manipur. These are evidences of the insensitivity and dominating tendency of the Manipur government where the sole intention is to grab the land and discard the owners. It is evident that one of the reasons for the recent ethnic cleansing of the Kukis is the lust to control and benefit from the Oil Palm Project.

(Insightful Facts: Two types of oil can be produced; crude palm-oil comes from squeezing the fleshy fruit, and palm kernel oil which comes from crushing the stone in the middle of the fruit. Besides being used as edible oil, palm-oil is increasingly used in the cosmetic industry and also as biofuel across the world)