Sitting by the stream that flows next to his house, Ningthoujam Lokeshor looks calm. But that look is deceptive. The 41-year-old poultry farmer has been number-crunching for sometime now. He has to pay Rs 1.2 lakh for his son Jameson’s multimedia course in Bangalore but doesn’t know where the money will come from. Should he sell his tiny plot of land? Or make a trip to the local money lender?

Less than a week after bird flu hit the Chingmeirong farm in Eastern Imphal district, Lokeshor is almost broke, with all 800 of his chicken culled and buried.

“I own less than an acre. Even if I mortage it, the money lender will charge at least 10 per cent interest on the loan. My son in Bangalore needs at least Rs 4,000 a month. I used to earn Rs 5-10,000 every month from my poultry business. Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he says as he points to his chicken coops, empty perhaps for the first time in a decade.

Located within five km of the Chingmeirong farm where avian flu was confirmed on July 25 and a 10-minute drive from the Chief Minister’s bungalow, Kongpal Chanam Leikai is typical of Imphal, where concrete structures in the city centre quickly give way to thatch roofs, corrugated tin and farm life. All along its kutcha lanes, the lush green is splattered with white patches of powdered lime — a sign that Rapid Response Teams are here on a culling mission.

The compensation paid by the government for culling his poultry, says Lokeshor, is very small. “They are paying Rs 30 for a full-grown bird of almost three kilos. A chick costs Rs 25. Before the outbreak, broiler chicken cost Rs 70 a kg in the market. They are even equating turkeys with chicken. Turkey chicks cost Rs 250 each, but the compensation is Rs 30 per bird. I let them cull the chicks, but I slaughtered the full-grown turkeys and ate and distributed the meat, rather than let them be culled.”

The RTI team seemed to have forgotten the single-coop farm of N. Motilal, 10 minutes from Lokeshor’s. After waiting for a week for the team to cull his chicken, Motilal sold them to a stranger at Rs 50 a bird.

“They came up to the head of my lane, but not further. Anyway, though it’s a big loss, I got a better deal. The government would have paid Rs 20 less,” he shrugs.

In rural Imphal, where poultry farming is preferred to paddy and vegetables cultivation, the fears aren’t about catching the flu. Rather, it’s over the fate of a business that went from cruise to crash.

By now, Lokeshor seems to know what to do. “I think I should sell the land, pay off my son’s fees at one go and invest in buying chickens again.”