Among brooms available in the market,
mainly two of the varieties owe their origin to the
forests - thorn and hill brooms. Brooms are a big business
in western and southern Orissa. Though most of the raw
material is sourced form this region, processing is
done outside the state due to various reasons whereby
valuable employment opportunity is lost and the state
looses precious revenue.
1.1 Badhun (Thorn broom - Aristida
Setacea)
Mostly found in Balangir and Bargarh,
the raw material finds its way to AP, where it is processed
and sold. One of the major final buyers is the Municipal
Corporation of Hyderabad, who uses the produce in its
cleaning operations. Every year in October, traders
from Andhra Pradesh come and camp in Balangir. But as
per the information available all of these traders collect
brooms on behalf of one Balaji Brooms Ltd. So virtually
in spite of the produce being free, this is a monopoly.
The traders either collect Badhun from
tribal directly or through the Kutchias. They give advance
payments to the collectors directly or the Kutchias,
who in turn advance it to the collectors depending on
the vulnerability of the later. By this they are assured
of procurement and at the same time earn hefty interests
on the advance, again depending upon the duration of
the advance or vulnerability of the primary collector.
The traders have been coming to Orissa
every year since 1983. They come with all preparations
to stay for the whole collection season and rent a house.
Every morning they would travel to the fields in motorcycles
and collect brooms from Kutchias. Whatever price they
pay, their trading mechanism is worth watching. They
send about 12-13 truckloads of Badhun to Andhra Pradesh.
Hyderabad, Warangal, Nellore, Vijaywada are some of
the areas where they send these produces for further
processing.
Has anything changed since the implementation
of new policy? Earlier it was one of the leaseholders
of the state that used to collect the Brooms who in
turn would supply it to the Trader in AP, though there
would be clandestine operations by the agents of traders
due to inherent problems - financial or otherwise, of
the former. Now the state agency, TDCC is one of the
buyers and the agents of traders can buy directly without
much of a hindrance. However - there has been a positive
fall out, despite the fact that most of the produces
procured ultimately land up with one buyer in AP; there
has been an increase in procurement price (close to
50%) in the last 2 years. This is one of the very few
produces, where the producers seem to have gained under
the changed regime with regards to the price.
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