*Herbs swing Bundelkhand tribals’ fortune* http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Herbs-swing-Bundelkhand-tribals-fortune/articleshow/5526063.cms
Manjari Mishra, TNN, 2 February 2010 LUCKNOW: Over the past eight years, Bhure Kol has added two rooms to his house, replaced its thatched roof with corrugated iron sheets and bought a second—hand moped. The illiterate tribal from Masaura, Lalitpur in Bundelkhand owes his prosperity to the rich herbal haul made by the family of six. The demand for ware on sale — Ashwagandha (withania somnifera) known popularly as Indian ginseng, White Museli (chiorophytum barivillianum) touted as desi Viagra, and other assorted prized herbs has gone up manifold. Therefore the market is growing, price is good and most importantly buyers turn up at his doorsteps saving him a business trip out of the quiet little hamlet to Jhansi. A hotbed of intense political activity, Bundelkhand is fast turning into a favourite hunting ground for big players in the alternative medicine. The region, in league with Orissa and Chattisgarh with its abundant medicinal plant produce, is equally vulnerable due to endemic poverty and therefore a gold mine waiting to be exploited by mushrooming herbal industry in Noida, Delhi, Gurgaon, and Faridabad. All they have to do is to send smart agents to pay the tribals advance money during lean seasons and then buy at their own rates. Luckily for them government offers little competition. Nearly 80% of tribals don’t even step into the collection centres set up by the state forest corporation, claimed Hem Raj Tripathi, one of the retailers in Manikpur, Chitrakoot. “Sarkari rates,” Tripathi says “are a joke”. And sure enough the rate list of the corporation 2007 08 offers Rs 30 for a kg of Satawar (asparagus racemousus) which dwindled to Rs 29 in 2009. The herb “greatly in demand by lactating mothers fetches between Rs 300 to 600 depending on the quality in Lucknow,” says LL Yadav, a dealer in Aminabad, Lucknow. Interestingly dozens of names like agani (cleaodendrum phiamoidis) a tonic and cure for syphilis, gagelua (ceropegia tuberosa) and Arjun (tarminalia Arjuna) for heart ailments including museli white and black both or Ashwagandha have disappeared from the rate list. The reason not even a kg of these has reached the collection centres since 2004 show the records of the annual auction sources in the forest department claim that they have been missing even before.
