I thought you said we’re going to see cardamom growing?” said I to Dinesh, our Sikkimese friend, “instead, we’re traipsing up a hill full of tall grass and weeds…” He silently bent under one of the grasses we’d been wading through, and took out a revolting bulbous mass of something. “It may look weedy,” said he with a smile, “but this is a cardamom plant … look, here’s a pod!” I looked at the innocuous black pod which is considered Sikkim’s black gold. Of the 4,000-odd tonnes of brown cardamom produced annually in India, this tiny state contributes about 88 per cent.
Around me, unruly tufts of cardamom haphazardly grew everywhere. “Cardamom needs very little care here,” said Dinesh, “we need to clear the foliage from under it when the plant flowers, and cut it to the root once we pluck the fruit.” New shoots emerge from the cut stem, ready to fruit in the next season. Apparently, the plant also requires little by the way of irrigation or manure. The returns are great: Each kilogram of the spice sells at anything from Rs 130 to Rs 200. It seemed to be the most perfect sort of cash crop — offering great returns with minimal effort.
But for Chirkey and Furkey. The two viral diseases have wrecked havoc amongst the large cardamom growing tracts of Sikkim and Darjeeling. Not only have they caused considerable crop losses, they’ve also engendered the complete removal of affected plants. “Initially, some farmers cut infected bushes down to the root as they normally did after harvesting the pods, hoping that the new shoots and suckers would be disease free,” said Dinesh. However, they realised that it was not that easy to get rid of Chirkey, and in fact the tenacious disease also spread through the use of contaminated harvesting knives. As a result, in the last decade, Sikkimese farmers have seen a continuous decline in cardamom production. During harvest time in September this year, most cardamom growers discovered there was hardly anything to harvest at all.
Dinsesh pointed out some plants affected by Chirkey, with mottled leaves and withering stems. “The Spice Board says that we must uproot all infected plants,” said he, pulling the plant out of the ground, “but that’s like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.” Few medicines, western or folk, seem to work on these two diseases. The best recourse is to replant using new, disease-free cardamom plants. “The government has sanctioned as much as Rs 23 crore in the 11th Five Year Plan for the improvement of cardamom plantations in Sikkim and Darjeeling,” said Dinesh, “but it’s slow going…”
Evidently, Chirkey and Furkey haven’t just destroyed cardamom plantations — they’ve also changed the lifestyle of the average Sikkimese. Many farmers have opted out of cardamom production and ventured into other businesses. “Earlier, farmers could reap big cardamom harvests with very little effort. Now, money is in short supply, and they’re discovering they have to work hard to earn a living,” said he. This year’s Dasain (Dusshera) festivities were also sadly muted. “We usually celebrate Dasain with much feasting and drinking. But this year’s harvest was so bad, that people had neither money nor enthusiasm to celebrate…” said Dinesh.
Later that day in Pelling, we walked from shop to shop, but none had fresh brown cardamom to sell. Morose shopkeepers bemoaned the lack of sales even during the festive season. Chirkey and Furkey seemed to have literally taken the spice out of Sikkimese way of life.
