J&K BECOMING LAVENDER HUB
The Jammu and Kashmir is on the path of development after the BJP Government took over the reins of the country and after well thought of decision, scrapped the contentious Article 370, which was the irksome bottleneck in the way of progress of this region despite the fact that it has lot of potential in tourism, agriculture, horticulture, and what not. After the abrogation of the aforesaid Article of the Constitution of India, the entire cabinet pondered over to find the ways and means to bring in development and peace as soon as possible in this region which was conventionally backward due to the orthodox mindset of the public representatives who believed that hard terrains and poor connectivity is a bottleneck and therefore there is no scope for the erstwhile state of J&K to grow and progress. It was PM Narendra Modi, who broke this jinx and focused on the colossal development and found new ways to bring in vibrancy whether it is economy or any other issue with which the region was confronting in the last over 70 years. One of the reasons behind the region lagging in various aspects was that the successive governments never thought out of the box, and remained working like ‘Kuvein Ka Mendak’. It was the Modi Government which took the pain and came out with steps to change the course of life of the people and one such ground-breaking step after many others is promoting Lavender Farming in the UT under the popular ‘Aroma Mission’ or ‘Purple Revolution’. This farsighted move has changed the lives of thousands of farmers towards betterment. It is pertinent to mention that Lavender or purple revolution was launched by the Union Ministry of Science & Technology through the ‘Aroma Mission’ of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 2016 and, so far, thousands of farmers have turned to lavender cultivation in almost all the twenty districts of J&K. Farmers are quite happy with farming of unconventional aromatic plants especially Lavender for it has transformed their lives with bringing them more income. The aromatic oils from Lavender are in great demand by the aroma industry and therefore providing good dividends to farmers in J&K. In this context, over 4 lakh plants of lavender were distributed among 200 farmers from different parts of J&K and some from NE at the end of an awareness-cum-training programme held in Bhaderwah. Looking into the success of Lavender farming in J&K, it is advisable for the other farmers to try hand in this non-conventional agri practice to ensure a good fortune and prosperous life.