One of my vivid memories from the mid-1960s is that of my father’s sister and her husband, solid middle class in Kerala’s Central Travancore region, living in an old house with a granary to store paddy. Paddy cultivation was very much a way of life then. Yet, it was a one-acre rubber plantation that kept the family afloat and comfortable. Curious that though I never had anything to do with rubber cultivation (and am today a medical doctor in a major hospital in Central Travancore), I remember that the price of rubber kept hovering around Rs. 15 a kg then. I do not know for sure what that translates to now. That was plenty for the times, I should imagine.
Yes, the west coast of India and some of the other parts of South East Asia have beckoned the enterprising from Arabia and Europe. Vasco da Gama landed on the shores of Malabar some five centuries ago, and we have it on record that some Arab dhows guided the last leg of his journey from Mozambique. The Portuguese made whopping profits from the trade of spices. So much so that one of their cathedrals was named the “Pepper Abbey,” alluding to the source of its funding. The Dutch fought bloody wars over the control of nutmeg production in Indonesia. The cultivation of spices has always been dicey, a lucky dip as it were. In the past 20 years or so, rubber cultivation, too, has followed suit.
Rubber growers, at least a million of them in Kerala alone, today face difficult times yet again after prices of natural rubber fell over 50 per cent in just three years. The steep fall in prices has led to a growing clamour. They demand that a higher import duty on rubber, raw or finished, be imposed. During the last fiscal, domestic rubber production was 8.44 tonnes, and the demand 9.77 lakh tonnes. Against this, 3.24 lakh tonnes was imported. This could be due to the fact that domestic tyre manufacturers are going in for imports, given the low prices in the international market. The State government has declared that it would procure rubber at a support price that is Rs. 5 more than the market price, although this is yet to happen. There is also some brain-storming going on about rubberising roads. Some experts aver that even if the rubber content in rubberised bitumen is only 2 per cent, if 10 per cent of roads in Kerala use the approach, the annual aggregate additional demand would be 60 lakh kg, and manifold if the entire country adopts it.
All the same, one has to be prepared for the vicissitudes in the future and history points to this trend. A narrative from Somerset Maugham, set in the Malaya in the 1920s (Short Story: ‘Foot Prints in the Jungle’) is a case in point. He went on to say while describing a slump I rubber prices, “Rubber had taken a toss and a lot of fellows had lost their jobs … In those days planters were even more worse paid than they are now and a man had to be lucky to put something away for a rainy day … They all go there [Singapore] when there is a slump, you know. It is awful then, I have seen it; I have known planters sleeping in the road because they hadn’t the price of a night’s lodging. I’ve known them to stop strangers outside the Europe and ask for a dollar to get a meal.”
This anecdote from the master storyteller is worth recalling in this difficult time. And mind you, he was talking about the plight of Englishmen at a time when Britannia ruled the waves. On the other hand, we have also heard of the violent euphoria when Brazilian planters hit the jackpot as prices sky-rocketed. It was said (source: National Geographic) that they used to light up their cigarettes with dollar notes!
All this goes to highlight the nature of trade cycles, and the very global nature of the prices of most commodities. I know it is all very well for me to pontificate, but it is going to be a rocky road ahead, and very prudent planning and planting will be vital in the years to come.
kuruvila2004@yahoo.com
