infrastructure was laid by the founding of organizations such as the Central Rice Institute in Cuttack, the Central Potato Research Institute in Shimla, and universities such as the Pant Nagar University. The population of India was growing at 3% per year, and food imports were required despite the improvements from the new infrastructure. At its peak, 10 million tonnes of food were imported from the United States. In the twenty-year period between 1965 and 1985 gaps in infrastructure were bridged by the establishment of The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). During times of famines, droughts, and other natural calamities, NABARD provides loan rescheduling and loan conversion facilitates to eligible institutions such as State Cooperative banks and Regional Rural Banks for periods up to seven years. In the same period, high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice were introduced. Steps taken in this phase resulted in the Green Revolution which led to a mood of self-confidence in India's agricultural capability. The Green Revolution in India was initially hailed as a success, but has recently been 'downgraded' to a 'qualified success'—not because of a lack of increased food production, but because the increase in food production has slowed down and has not been able to keep pace with population growth. Between 1985 and 2000, the emphasis was laid on the production of millets, pulses, and oilseed, as well as vegetables, fruits, and milk. A wasteland development board was set up, and rain-fed areas were given more attention. Public investment in irrigation and infrastructure, however, declined. The period also saw a gradual collapse of the cooperative credit system. In 1998–99, NABARD introduced a credit scheme to allow banks to issue short-term and timely credit to farmers in need via the Kisan Credit Card scheme. The scheme has become popular among issuing bankers and the recipient farmers with a total credit of made available via the issuing of 23,200,000 credit cards . Between 2000 and , land use for food or fuel has become a competing issue due to a demand for ethanol. Local beliefs Since the time of Mahabharata, people in several regions of India have associated spikes in rat populations and famine with bamboo flowering. The northeastern state of Mizoram has bamboo as a dominant species over much of the state which experiences a cyclical phenomenon of bamboo flowering followed by bamboo death. The bamboo plants are known to undergo