Mar 20, 2007 :: Rubber trees as border guards

In an innovative move, the government is exploring the creation of rubber plantations all along Tripura’s borders with Bangladesh. These are notoriously leaky and soldiers can’t quite cope with illegal immigrants. Fencing with barbed wire is also very expensive and requires constant maintenance.

The idea is to create rubber plantations, populate them with tribals to manage them, get them to double as cost-free guards and have a profitable harvest of rubber, to boot. [!] A 3,784ha of pilot plantation has already been created and another 400ha will be added this year.Report