Abstract

The North East hill region has a total geographical area of 275000 km² of which 212000 km² is under hills. The 0.43 million rural people are living in four districts of Sikkim. The Sikkim is badly affected due to earthquakes.  There is a huge loss in the state which was estimated as $45.8 million by State government. The union government has sanctioned $208.33 million for the earthquake victims.  The main crops in Sikkim are rice, maize, black gram, mustard, cardamom, finger, passion fruit, mandarin etc. The rural population of Sikkim needs immediate relief measures (short term and long term strategy for employment opportunities) through engineering interventions in the disciplines of renewable energy, agro and food processing and entrepreneurship development for commercialization of improved farm technologies. The establishment of modern rice mill (capacity 0.5 t/h) costing $20833.33 need to be established in each block of state. The organic agro-processing centre costing $8333.33 within 5 km periphery is the ideal approach for each 10 clusters in terrace condition. The Sikkim state has production of mandarin (9256 tons) and passion fruit (293 tons) annually which need processing for value addition ensuring employment opportunities (Anonymous, 2009). The small gadgets of renewable energy like solar cooker, solar lantern, solar dryer, solar street light, solar water heating system, improved cook-stove should be made available to all consumers of earth affected regions.

Key words: Earthquake, mandarin, terrace, gadgets, passion fruit.