This paper examines the expansion of mono-crop cultivation in Mizoram - specifically oil palm and jatropha - as a case of top-down agrarian transformation with deep ecological, economic, and cultural consequences. Promoted through policies such as the National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm (NMOOP) and the New Land Use Policy (NLUP), these monocultures have been framed as developmental solutions to the perceived inefficiencies of traditional shifting cultivation (Jhum). Drawing on secondary sources, government reports, and critical media, and written from the emic perspective of an Indigenous Mizo scholar, this paper interrogates how these projects have reconfigured land governance, displaced traditional ecological knowledge, and exposed communities to environmental degradation and market precarity. The paper situates these trends within broader debates on neoliberal agrarian governance, biofuel-driven land use change, and Indigenous sovereignty. It concludes with policy recommendations grounded in agroecology, customary land systems and community-driven alternatives that center ecological justice and cultural continuity.
1. Introduction
Mizoram, a hilly state in Northeast India, is home to diverse Indigenous communities whose livelihoods have long been sustained by Jhum, or shifting cultivation. This rotational, multi-crop farming system is rooted in a relational understanding of land, seasonality, and community labor. Far from being ecologically destructive, Jhum historically supported agro-biodiversity, food sovereignty, and social cohesion, while allowing for forest regeneration through planned fallow cycles. However, in recent decades, this deeply embedded agrarian system has come under pressure from state-led modernization programs that frame Jhum as unproductive, backward, and ecologically unsound.
Among the most significant shifts in Mizoram’s agrarian economy has been the state-sponsored expansion of mono-crop cultivation, particularly of oil palm and, to a lesser extent, jatropha. These crops have been promoted as alternatives to Jhum through programs such as the New Land Use Policy (NLUP) and the National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm (NMOOP). Government and corporate actors portray these transitions as a path to rural prosperity, employment, and sustainable development. However, on the ground, these initiatives have raised serious concerns about deforestation, loss of customary land rights (Mizo hnam dan), erosion of traditional ecological knowledge, and increased dependency on volatile commodity markets.
Oil palm, introduced with the promise of reducing India’s edible oil imports, has taken root in several districts through public-private partnerships, including the 2022 memorandum of understanding signed between the Government of Mizoram and Patanjali Foods Ltd. (Northeast Now 2022). Similarly, jatropha was promoted in the 2000s under the National Bio-Energy Mission as a miracle biofuel crop for degraded lands. Yet the actual outcomes reveal a widening gap between policy rhetoric and lived experience. Jatropha plantations were largely unsuccessful due to poor yields, limited processing infrastructure, and a lack of market access (Bhattacharyya 2023), leaving many farmers with degraded land and unrecoverable investments.
This paper examines the ecological, economic, and socio-cultural implications of these transformations, drawing on secondary sources, policy analysis, and critical journalism. Framed from the emic perspective of an Indigenous Mizo scholar, the study seeks to foreground Indigenous knowledge systems and interrogate the imposition of development models that displace rather than empower local communities. By situating Mizoram’s mono-cropping shift within broader national and global frameworks - such as neoliberal agrarianism, biofuel expansion, and frontier extraction - the paper contributes to ongoing debates about Indigenous land sovereignty, ecological justice, and alternatives to monocultural development.