The Joint Forest Management at South Betul Division in Madhya Pradesh, where the locals and the forest department work together for protection of the forest, had made some revenue for the samiti members by selling timber. A 20 percent cut is given to the samiti out of the total revenue generated from selling of the timber they collect. However, another samiti – the Korkudana Van Samiti – was yet to generate such revenue.
On one of his routine meets with the samiti members, DFO South Betul Forest Division, Mr. Vejaynantham TR, got to know that the Korkudana Van Samiti required an employment opportunity to invest in with their pending money. As it is a decentralized system, the demand of the people is given priority. Many times, the money is invested in developmental works like road transport, beatification work like pond making, etc.
TURNING LABOURERS INTO ENTREPRENEURS
While speaking with Indian Masterminds, IFS officer Vejaynantham said, “The only thing the Korkudana Samiti was lacking was enough employment opportunities. They had all the basic facilities like school, road transport, etc. After asking them where they wanted to invest the pending money, they demanded employment generation. However, to find this out, we needed to know the roots of these people as we couldn’t force a skillset on them.”
The area is famous for producing Dona Pattal plates which is made out of Mahul and Palash leaves. In this process, the people of that particular samiti were just getting paid for their labour of collecting the leaves. The major profit was being taken by the mediators to whom the leaves were sold by the people at meager rates. These middlemen were selling the plates for almost 10 times higher the price they were giving to the local people for collecting the leaves.
Mr. Vejaynantham said, “We thought that this is unfair for the people, as they were doing the maximum hard work and were being paid pennies. So we planned on converting these labourers into entrepreneurs by establishing a full setup of machinery for creating dona patta plates. The money, through which they wanted employment generation, was planned to be used for setting up the machinery.”
BETUL GREENS TAKES BIRTH
The people were linked to the machine vendors by the forest department and the required money was paid through the pending revenue which was resting with the samiti. Mr. Vejaynantham said, “There was one old forest deputy ranger quarter which was lying vacant in that area. We renovated it and gave a three-face electricity connection. The whole setup of machinery, which included five types of pattal making machines (12-inch, 10-inch, 8-inch, 6-inch and 4-inch), was installed at the newly renovated building.”
The forest department decided to sell these dona pattal plates under the brand name Betul Greens, to give an identity to the producers. Hence, a logo was designed for the same. A beat guard was assigned to them to guide them and help them in bringing orders and maintaining the cash book. Mr. Vejaynantham said, “As Van Mela will be organised in December in Bhopal by the MP State Minor Forest Produce, some interested people from Korkudana Van Samiti were sent to Bhopal for training. All the micro industries and forest produce processing centres will be displayed in the Van Mela.”
These people were sent to Bhopal to get trained in processing and packaging of the product and how to display it. The people are very happy to get involved in this activity which is providing them with a good employment opportunity. As plastic is banned and is being avoided in the country, the demand for such plates has increased. Mr. Vejay said “We are receiving orders in large quantities, so much so that we will not be able to meet the demands even by working day and night. The people who were earlier getting 70 paisa for each plate are now getting Rs 5 per plate, which includes a total profit of around Rs 3.20 per plate.”
CM of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, also visited the stall of dona pattal makers from South Betul division and was extremely happy to see the labourerers turning into entrepreneurs. He spoke to them and enquired about the process of making the plates.
