Centre’s liberalisation policy badly hits tribal families

Visakhapatnam: Vanishing of the Gum Karaya trees and the Central government’s liberalisation policies on glue imports, large number of tribal families, are losing their income in Andhra Pradesh. 

Gum Karaya (Sterculia Urens Roxb) is one of the good revenue sources for the tribals. There is a good demand for the Andhra Agency glue collected from the trees.

However, during the last five years, the trees are not growing and the tribals are paying hard efforts to identify the trees. Meanwhile, with the liberalisation policies on the glue imports also, the procurement of the glue from the tribals came down drastically.

In fact, the forest department in association with some agencies started special nurseries and distributed the saplings to increase the trees. But, there is no desired result in conserving the trees.

Girijan Cooperative Corporation (GCC) is procuring the gum with a minimum supportive price of Rs 108 per kg presently. Earlier, the GCC also paid Rs 140 to 150 per kg when there was a big demand for AP Agency glue in the international market.

“Yes, the tribals are not finding much Gum Karaya trees in the forest. However, it is a non-timber forest produce and forest department is supposed to look after the issue and procurement by the GCC. The ITDA is not involved in the glue business,” Project Horticulture Officer, ITDA, Paderu, Prabhaka Rao said.

Both tribal men and women collect the gum. The tribals walk at least a distance of 5 to 10 km to identify the trees. Whoever first spots the tree, it will be owned by the family and that family only will collect the gum from the tree.

Normally, from each blaze about 150 gm of gum will be collected from a tree. Once the gum is collected, the family will wait minimum three weeks to collect the gum again from the tree. The tribal women will take up the processing works including drying and grading to sell the product.

There are three varieties of gum being collected from the Andhra Pradesh forest based on the quality and colour, and it would be graded as white, tan and dark tan colour.

“The GCC is procuring the gum from tribals. However, due to the Central government’s liberalisation on the glue imports, there is no sale of the gum collected from the tribals. At present, the GCC is having huge gum stocks,” says GCC General Manager (sales and procurement) Ashok Kumar.