The Kendu Leaf Trade: Problems & Prospects in Orissa - Vasundhara

Not only the procurement of KL, but the bush cutting operations done to ensure better production
also provides employment to the local people. Decrease in procurement or closure of phadis can
directly have an adverse impact on all such kinds of employment opportunity. In fact, the
government ordered in 2005 to increase the earlier proposed target(0.25 lakh quintals) for phal
production to 0.50 lakh quintals so that the poor pluckers of concerned tribal areas would not
suffer financially from stopping KL operations all of a sudden(vide approved minutes of the
KLCC meeting for 2005 crop year).
Instances from the Navarangpur KL Division suggest that irregularities in the procurement (like,
temporary suspension) may result in the weakening of the pluckers workforce because the
uncertainties may divert them to other kinds of employment opportunity. Since KL plucking is a
kind of skilled or semi-skilled job, pluckers’ disinterest in the collection of KL is not a matter to
be ignored particularly in view of the quality crisis in our production.
8.The crisis of exaggerating the situation:
While some authorities the KL wing and/or OFDC seem to be increasingly taking refuse under
the crisis in the bidi market in order to escape the blame on their own negligence and
malpractices, the case of significantly high transaction of smuggled leaves indicates that such an
excuse can not be granted so easily.
The following charts would indicate that although the bidi industry as a whole appears to have
suffered some set back, the impact of the current crisis in the industry has not been uniform. For
instance, the trend in the total production of G.C.Shaha, manufacturers of the reputed brand
Meghna Bidi, has not been the same as compared to that of some of its major counterparts in
western Orissa, as seen in charts 7-10:
Chart-7
Bidi production by G.C.Shaha in Orissa
Production in numbers
1800000000
1600000000
1400000000
1200000000
1000000000
800000000
600000000
400000000
200000000
0
Production in unit-
1(Badmal)
Production in unit-
2(Ganesh nagar)
Production in unit-
3(Sambalpur)
Total production in
three units
1996-97
1997-98
1998-99
1999-2000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
Year
(based on data provided by Central Excise & Customs)
21