How a leaf changed fortunes of India’s poorest communities

Manu Moudgil

Dhamadi Tola, Gondia district, Maharashtra: One nippy November morning, Gopal Kumeti picked up a brown, rough fruit from the ground, resembling chickoo (sapodilla). “This is the fruit of the tendu tree. When dried, it remains good for 4-5 months. People who did not have enough grain, used to survive on this. It has become a rarity in the last 30-35 years because tendu is not allowed to grow like this,” said Kumeti, head of a federation of gram sabhas (village committees) in eastern Maharashtra, pointing to the tall tendu tree with a distinctively black bark. Then Kumeti pointed towards the younger plants, some reaching a height of 6 feet, and shorter grass that reach his shins. “We are bringing this change,” he said proudly.

 We were in a patch of forest in Dhamadi Tola village in Gondia district of eastern Maharashtra, around 40 km from the national highway that connects Nagpur with Raipur in Chhattisgarh. Here 18 villages have proved their business acumen by creating a thriving trade in tendu leaves, while conserving the species which were once disappearing from this forest, all through the efficient management of natural resources. Along the way, they have earned enough money to appoint teachers, repair ponds, plant trees and take up cleanliness drives.

 Local community ownership of the tendu leaf and other forest produce, otherwise controlled by the forest department, private contractors, state federations and, in some case, naxals, could help conserve natural resources, while also providing livelihood opportunities to mostly poor tribal villagers–45.3 % of whom live under the poverty line in India.

 How the Forest Rights Act could help tribals

 The tendu leaf, mostly used to roll bidis (hand-rolled cigarettes popular in India), is a major income source, especially in central India. Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra sold Rs 1,900 crore worth of tendu leaves in 2012, said a study by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, a research institution on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

 Control over tendu leaves is also a politically charged subject. For instance, the Chhattisgarh government recently announced a Rs 274 crore bonus to leaf collectors in Naxal-dominated areas of the state to win over local people, especially as Naxals often dictate terms to tendu leaf traders.

 In all this, local inhabitants have little say in deciding collection wages and the bonus distributed after sale of leaves. States such as Madhya Pradesh hold back part of the bonus, and promise to spend it on the development of the villages through welfare schemes. The process, however, has led to embezzlement of these funds in the past, with Madhya Pradesh’s Minor Forest Produce Federation accused of siphoning off Rs 365 crore meant for development projects for tribals.

 In 2011-12, in India, 45.3 per cent of over 93.8 million tribals lived under the rural poverty line of Rs 27, while 24.1 per cent of 10.4 million tribals lived under the urban poverty line of Rs 33, according to information provided by Ministry of Tribal Affairs in the Lok Sabha.

 In 2012, the forest department had mandated that the auction of tendu leaves be cancelled if a fire was lit, provoking a boycott of the tendering process by traders. Now with people getting community rights, the traders have no say in how the leaves are extracted.  

 104 villages in Maharashtra earn Rs 9.8 crore through the tendu trade

 About 9.4 per cent of the population in Maharashtra is tribal, and 42.4% of these tribals live below the poverty line, according to information provided by ministry of tribal affairs to the Lok Sabha, parliament’s lower house.

 Around 440,000 families collected tendu leaves in Maharashtra in 2012, according to recordsof the Maharashtra State Forest Department.

 By August 2017, Maharashtra had allotted over 4.43 million acres of forest land–290 times size of Mumbai, the state’s capital–largest among all states, under community forest rights that allow forest dwellers to not only use and sell minor forest produce on their own, but also manage and protect its natural resources. Around 104 villages earned Rs 9.8 crore by selling tendu leaves under community forest rights in 2017, according to this report in the Times of India.

  It was in 2013 that villagers in four Maharashtra villages in Deori taluka (block) of Gondia, including Dhamadi Tola, took over the collection and sale of the most lucrative minor forest produce in the village–the tendu leaf–after they gained community rights over the forest, under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Right) Act, 2006 (FRA). Earlier, the forest department would engage the villagers as labourers, and sell the produce to traders.

 The experiment was so popular that the number of villages in the federation rose from four in 2013 to 18 in 2017.

 In 2017, the 18 gram sabhas earned Rs 5.07 crore by selling 5,458 standard bags–each bag has 70,000 leaves of tendu. The villagers earned Rs 3,000 as collection wage and Rs 5,000 bonus (given after the sale of produce) per bag. Around 5% of the revenue was kept aside for a village development fund to be spent by the gram sabha.

Each gram sabha got about Rs 2-2.5 lakh in its development fund depending on the number of bags deposited. Dhamadi Tola used this money to appoint two teachers in its primary school, while other villages organised cleanliness drives or local festivals. In Gadchiroli’s Bhamragad and Dhanora taluka, villages repaired ponds and planted bamboo from the development fund.

The federation now has Rs 17 lakh in its bank account

 When the villagers first started selling tendu leaves, no buyers showed up. But this prosperity was hard won, especially as villagers had to learn about a market they knew little about.

 In the first year of taking over the management of the tendu trade, the four gram sabhaswere joined by 12 villages of Gadchiroli and two villages of Amravati district. When the villages put out tenders for the sale of tendu leaves, no trader bid. The state government’s tribal development department stepped in, and agreed to buy the produce and extended an advance of Rs 1.20 crore for procuring the leaves.

  By 2015, the gram sabhas were financially independent. “Over the last three years, the federation has also gained enough knowledge of the field and built a network of market contacts that helps fetch a good price,” Narayan Salame, general secretary of Dhamadi Tola gram sabha, told IndiaSpend. Similar federations have also been established in Gadchiroli and Amravati districts.

 Earlier, traders used to dictate collection rates by moving collection centres from one village to another every three to four days. They would force us “to go for distress sale”, said Gangadhar Mishra, the president of federation of gram sabhas in Sadak Arjuni taluka. 

 Not all traders are on board with the new process

 Some local traders believe there is more corruption now. “The federations are dominated by people with vested interests and they are not following a transparent processes like tendering. In this process, common villagers get cheated,” said Jayesh Patel, the president of the Gondia Beedi Leaves Contractors’ Association, which had complained against two federations in Gondia district. The district collector ordered federations to re-auction the produce but gram sabhas refused to obey the order. Finally, the Mumbai-based secretary of Maharashtra’s tribal development department went through the details of the complaint, and concluded that there were no irregularities.

 Further, many gram sabhas still find it difficult to get the traders on board. Around 28 villages of Bhamragad taluka (block) of Gadchiroli district, which entered the trade this year, are yet to find a buyer. 

Different villages follow different models of tendu trade

 According to forest department records, around 902 villages in Maharashtra have community rights over tendu leaves in over 141,000 hectares of land with the production potential of 27,667 standard bags. But not all of these villages have taken over the trade, and some still opt for the old arrangement by asking the forest department to manage the sale.

 Gram sabhas also use different methods to sell the produce. “A few went for tendering, others called for open bids through newspaper advertisements, some also fixed a base price for such bids,” said Mahesh Raut, a social activist who guided villages in Gadchiroli in PESA, forest rights and the sale of minor forest produce. “These diverse models will help people learn and then adopt the best one that works for them.”