Burud Karagirs : Better Days Ahead?

Adv. Paromita Goswami

There are an estimated 50,000 families in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra who are traditional bamboo weavers, earning their livelihood by selling bamboo items such as baskets, mats, chicken coops, fishing equipment, decoration pieces etc. A vast majority of these weavers belong to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and a fewer number who belong to the various ‘OBC’ castes.

The rights of bamboo weavers are recognised in no uncertain terms under the National Forest Policy, 1988. One of the basic objectives of this policy is to meet the requirements of minor forest produce such as bamboo of the tribal and rural population residing near the forests. This policy lists the protection of ‘rights and concessions’ available to the tribals and other rural population living near the forest as a strategy of forest management. It even promotes enlisting the active participation of local tribal and rural people especially women in the management and conservation activities.

The clarity with which the National Forest Policy, 1988 aims to ensure the bonafide livelihood requirements of local people creates the expectation that the requirements of the bamboo weavers would be met squarely. However, a serious contradiction arises through the manner in which the forest department seeks to operationalise the policy mandate by creating a series of legal and institutional structures for the provision of bamboo. In the 1990s various programmes sought to have an impact on access to bamboo: (a) In the 1990s the forest department issued a Government Resolution (G.R) declaring that all bamboo workers would be issued with ‘Bamboo Cards’ (known as ‘Basod Card’ in local parlance) and 1500 green bamboos would be made available at concessional rates (known as ‘nistar rates’) at the forest department depots. (b) Apart from this, there was the World Bank backed Joint Forest Management Programme which promised a share in the forest produce. In the 2000s three distinct pieces of legislation vested entitlements over minor forest produce in gram sabhas. (c) In 2006 the Forest Rights Act was passed which ensured community forest rights (hereafter CFR) and several villages in Vidarbha successfully claimed such rights. Bamboo was one of the key forest resources over which the Gram Sabha claimed governance rights. (d) In 2014 Maharashtra government notified the Village Forest Rules under section 26 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927. These rules were offered as an extension of the Joint Forest Management Scheme. As far as bamboo is concerned, the Village Forest rules explicitly stated that the first charge on the bamboo harvested from a village forest would belong to the bamboo weavers in that village. (e) In 2015 Maharashtra issued orders specifically for empowering Gram Sabhas in PESA areas for the management of bamboo with a focus on removing technical difficulties pertaining to harvesting and sale. Thus, Adivasi Gram Sabhas in the PESA areas were given certain powers regarding bamboo which were not given to Gram Sabhas in the non-PESA areas. The reality is that none of these multiple institutional structures is able to meet the requirement of 1500 bamboos annually per basod card holder. The ground reality is that in majority cases the bamboo weaver’s access to bamboo is to help themselves directly from the forests which puts them at risk of legal action by the forest department officials (who are then bribed to look the other way). The bamboo weavers’ access to markets is mediated through the contractor-middlemen who buy their products often paying advance amounts. The artisans are thus dependent on them as much for sales as for survival. The inter-relationships between the forest department, the contractor/middlemen and the burad karagirs form the basic triad which determines the livelihood options of traditional bamboo weavers at the ground level. In 2015 the first Convention of Burad Karagirs of Eastern Vidarbha was organised at Chandrapur attended by bamboo weavers from Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Bhandara and Gondia districts of the region. Several resolutions were passed for the protection and promotion of their traditional livelihood including greater access to forests, the needed for updating technology through training, better access to markets, and a government-backed corporation for promoting better access to markets. The last was particularly important as it emerged from a desire to move away from the present dependency on contractors-middlemen. Maharashtra government has started some new initiatives around ‘bamboo’ including the opening of a Bamboo Training Institute at Chandrapur. Hopefully, the government will also find time to streamline the multiple structures and eliminate middlemen/contractors to ensure that this age-old craft of the region is not lost. In fact, with the present government focus on Skill-Development and Make in India/Vidarbha/Chandrapur the burud karagirs should definitely see better days ahead.

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