KEY POINTS:
The people of Mizoram, a tiny, remote state of north-east India squeezed between Burma and Bangladesh, have known for the past 48 years that they would face famine in 2008.
Confirmation came last November when the local species of bamboo that dominates the state's landscape began to burst
into flower - a peculiar ecological phenomenon that happens about twice a century.
A plague of rats rapidly followed, feasting on the bamboo's protein-rich avocado-like fruit, before swarming to consume the farmers' rice paddies, grain harvests and food stockpiles. Now up to a million people are facing hunger, according to aid agencies.
Mrinal Gohain, of charity Action Aid, said: "There were rats all over the fields. Farmers would go to harvest their crops and find that the entire field had been eaten overnight."
Although the state government had ample warning and has been making preparations for four years, its emergency measures have proved inadequate in the face of the exploding rat population.
A bounty on rats was announced last year (a rupee for every tail), public bonfires of slaughtered rats were held and free rat poison and traps were distributed, but to little avail.
"The crisis is unfolding and is going to get worse. We anticipate that if this continues we will see something terrible happening here," Gohain said.
The luckier villagers in the worst-affected areas were living on one meal a day, he said, while thousands more were foraging in the forests for food, surviving on roots, herbs and leaves.
Although no hunger deaths had yet been reported, stockpiles of food were rapidly dwindling and few villagers had enough money to buy the subsidised supply of relief rice, he said.
Most farmers had no seed for new crops and the true impact of the disaster would only be felt later in the year.
Twenty years of violent guerilla unrest followed the last appearance of the bamboo flower and the famine, known locally as mautam (bamboo death) in 1959.
Politicians had then dismissed villagers' warnings of imminent disaster as local folklore. This time nobody has questioned the bamboo legend.
The fruit of the Melocanna baccifera, which flourishes across hundreds of thousands of acres of Mizoram, is delicious to rodents and attracts rats from neighbouring states and countries. Locals suspect it has aphrodisiac qualities for rats, fuelling their numbers.
Scientists have found that more baby rats survive when the bamboo has flowered as the adult male rats, which are known to eat their newborn offspring, tend to leave them alone when they have had their fill of fruit.
As a result, litters of up to 13 rats survive and are ready to reproduce in three months.
The state declared a disaster in December but the crisis has been largely unreported within India, where national media tend to pay little attention to the problems endured by the nation's 700 million rural population, preferring to focus on Delhi-centred political intrigue and Bollywood gossip.
Aid workers say that the state-run Bamboo Flowering and Famine Combat Scheme has largely failed, but local officials blame India's national government. PC Lalthlamuana, director of disaster management in the state, said no help had arrived from Delhi.
"We have applied for aid, we are expecting it, but it is rather slow in coming," he said, adding that deaths from malnutrition were a possibility.
Reports of rodent-borne disease have increased, but most of the rats are also now said to be dying from hunger.
- OBSERVER
