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Bamboo is a versatile material. Its versatility can be gauged by the fact that Thomas Edison successfully used a carbonized bamboo filament in his experiment with the first light bulb. This light bulb still burns today in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. He also used a bamboo as rebar for the reinforcement of his swimming pool. To this day, the pool has never leaked. Bamboo has an unrivaled utility. One resource book lists over 5,000 uses including paper, scaffolding, diesel fuel, airplane "skins", desalination filters, musical instruments, medicine, food, as also Alexander Graham Bell’s first phonograph needle. Amidst death and destruction, bamboo survived the Hiroshima atomic blast closer to ground zero than any other living thing and provided the first re-greening in Hiroshima after the blast in 1945.
With a tensile strength superior to mild steel (withstands up to 52,000 Pounds of pressure psi) and a weight-to-strength ratio surpassing that of graphite, bamboo is the strongest growing hardy grass on earth. It also grows the fastest: clocked shooting skyward at 2 inches an hour. Some species grow one and a half meters a day.
India is home to about 130 species of bamboo-the second highest in the world. In many parts of the country the use of bamboo is ubiquitous. For centuries, communities have put the material to functional yet aesthetic use; their skills having evolved over centuries. Even today, by far the most important uses of bamboo are in the every day lives of people. In recent years, a range has emerged of products and applications that use bamboo in newer and value-added way, and have been developed through the application of scientific and engineering skills. It is these products and applications that lend credence and substance to the belief that bamboo can be an important vehicle for widespread and sustainable development. The National Mission on Bamboo Applications (NMBA) is one of the key initiatives of the Department of Science & Technology for the Tenth Plan. It is structured as a Technology Mission, and implemented in a mission-mode by the Technology, Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC).
Bamboo is in the process of being ‘rediscovered’ in India. Its attributes and potential are increasingly recognised. NMBA has been tasked with creating the basis for enlarging the bamboo sector, and to supporting the efforts of the Government of India towards augmenting economic opportunity, income and employment especially in areas, and amongst people who are disadvantaged.
The Mission has carried out extensive testing and an assessment of inherent characteristics of Indian species of bamboo. The results were matched with existing and potential uses of bamboo. Based on this exercise, and taking into account availability and dispersal of bamboo species, the Mission has evolved a recommendation for focus on 16 commercially significant species. These are:Bambusa bambos, Bambusa balcoa, Bambusa nutans, Bambusa pallida, Bambusa polymorpha,Bambusa tulda, Dendrocalamus asper, Dendrocalamus brandisii, Dendrocalamus giganteus, Dendrocalamus hamiltonii, Dendrocalamus strictus, Melaconna baccifera, Ochlandra travancorica, Oxytenanthera stocksii, Phyllostachys bambusoides, Thyrsostachys oliverii. The core application and thrust areas of the Mission include wood substitutes and composites, structural and constructional applications, bamboo shoots, propagation and cultivation, machinery and process technologies, industrial products and energy.
Wood Substitutes & Composites
The Mission is promoting wood substitutes and composites, including boards of varying descriptions and uses. These materials provide an opportunity to establish integrative models of economic activity. It links the organised and unorganised sectors, operating at differing levels of scale, enterprise and technology, and creating multi-product synergies.
The Mission is helping in the establishment of a 60,000 sqare metre per annum plant at Guwahati to manufacture composites/ flooring boards.
Development of Machinery A major thrust area of the Mission is the development of machinery for processing of bamboo. So far, most processing of bamboo has been done only with traditional and simple hand tools. Imported machinery is expensive, and often unsuited for Indian bamboo, which is strong, and has a high silica content in its outer layer, leading to the faster wear-out of cutting tools. The Mission has worked with machinery manufacturers in Ludhiana, Dewas and Delhi to develop ranges of efficient, sturdy and low-cost tooling and processing machinery, suited to Indian conditions and species, to reduce drudgery, improve productivity and minimize wastage.
Industrial Products
Bamboo processing ‘waste’ is an excellent source material for high grade charcoal and activated carbon. The Mission is testing and establishing technologies to enable the manufacture of charcoal and activated carbon to be taken up at different scales of economic activity. Drum based bamboo charcoal units have been designed to process 25 Kg/ shift, 50 Kg per day.
Bamboo for Energy
Gasification of bamboo can produce energy and a range of valuable by-products. It reinforces a commitment to clean and renewable electricity and thermal energy.
The Mission promotes the induction of gasifiers using bamboo and bamboo waste to generate electricity and thermal energy, especially in off-grid and remote locations, and to meet captive industry and utility needs.
The technology has been developed, tested and stabilised and is now available for large scale induction, suitable for application in the 10Kw to 1Mw range. Already approved for operationalisation are two thermal units (1 Mw equivalent each) at Jagi Road and Silchar in Assam, using the bamboo processing waste from paper manufacturing units of the Hindustan Paper Corporation.
Cultivation Despite India’s wealth of bamboo resources, a constraint inhibiting the development of value added enterprise is that of sourcing adequate raw material at reasonable prices. In most application areas there is a need for quality material, defined by species, maturity, bamboo characteristics, harvesting technique and post-harvest treatment. The Mission is developing, demonstrating & encouraging intensive and scientific cultivation practices for higher productivity. Demonstration of packages of practices for intensive cultivation and higher productivity, utilising fly-ash soil amendment in Sehore, Madhya Pradesh and Korba, Chhattisgarh have taken place. NMBA, the Department of Bio-Technology, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), laboratories and private entrepreneurs have worked together over the past year to effect a breakthrough in tissue culture of commercially significant species of bamboo. It is now possible, through tissue culture methods, to supply large quantities of good quality plant material at reasonable costs.
Soil Stabilisation & Rejuvenation
Bamboo contributes to the soil and environment, giving back as much as it takes. The Mission is developing a range of packages of practices for soil stabilisation and rejuvenation activities, and disseminating and demonstrating them. NMBA is establishing a community managed bamboo resource in Farukkhabad with an annual production of 200 tonnes of culm timber and 100 tonnes of shoots. It has undertaken plantation of a bamboo green wall for erosion control and soil stabilisation along a 2 kilometre stretch on Majuli, the largest river island in the world.
BambooShoots
Bamboo shoots carry the potential of value added economic activity at the entrepreneurial and community level through cultivation, processing and packaging. Working with laboratories, testing facilities, technology developers, communities and entrepreneurs, the Mission is developing mechanisms, methodologies and markets to encourage entrepreneurs to take up the processing of bamboo shoot for the market. It is helping in the establishment of a 900 TPA unit for processing/ packaging of bamboo shoot at Dimapur, Nagaland.
Amending an Act
To encourage and develop the bamboo sector, it needs to be exempted from the regulatory provisions of the Indian Forest Act 1927 which require transit passes for the movement of forest produce. A similar move has enabled the plantation economies of Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh to flourish. In a way, the success of NMBA will depend to some extent on how soon such changes are brought about in the Indian Forest Act.
*DPR, PIB, New Delhi
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