gregarious flowering once in their life cycle which can happen anywhere in a range of 7 to 120 years. A common local belief and observation is that bamboo flowering is followed by an increase in rats, famine, and unrest amongst the people. This is called mautam. The first such event in the Republic of India was reported in 1958 when the local Mizo District Council cautioned the Assam government of an impending famine which the government rejected on the grounds that it was not scientific. A famine did occur in the region in 1961. In 2001 the Government of India began working on an emergency plan to address regional food shortages after reports that bamboo flowering and bamboo death would occur again in the near future. According to Forest Department Special Secretary K.D.R. Jayakumar, the relationship between famine and bamboo flowering, while widely believed to be true by the tribal locals, has not been scientifically proven. John and Nadgauda, however, strongly feel that such a scientific connection exists and that it may not simply be a local myth. They describe a detailed mechanism demonstrating the relationship between the flowering and the famine. According to them, the flowering is followed by a large number of bamboo seeds on the forest floor which causes a spike in the population of the rodent genera Rattus and Mus who feed on these seeds. With the changing weather and onset of rains, the seeds germinate and force the mice to migrate to land farms in search of food. On the land farms, the mice feed on crops and grains stored in granaries which causes a decline in food availability. In 2001, the local administration tried to prevent the impending famine by offering local villagers the equivalent of $2.50 for every 100 rats killed. The botanist H. Y. Mohan Ram of the University of Delhi, who is one of the country's foremost authorities on bamboo, considered these techniques outlandish. He suggested that a better way of solving the problem was to teach the local farmers to switch to cultivating different varieties of crops such as ginger and turmeric during periods of bamboo flowering since these crops are not consumed by the rats. Similar beliefs have been observed in south India in the people of Cherthala in the Alappuzha district of Kerala who associate flowering bamboo with an impending explosion in the rat population. Bihar drought The