Though Kendu leaf is one of the major sources of livelihood income out of the forest for many communities, WB accounts for miniscule percentage of total production in the country. Out of a total production of 300000 MT, WB accounted for 500 MT (S. Paul, 1978). And as can be seen in the figure below, the production has come full circle as KL procurement by the the state is back to 500 MT after nearly 2 and ½ decades.

As mentioned before, KL comes under monopoly rights of WBTDCC through LAMPS. LAMPS are co-operative societies of the socially backward caste people. In the arrangement for KL collection and marketing, LAMPS do all the fieldwork, whereas TDCC channelises finance for procurement and then takes responsibility of selling.

The process gets going with TDCC notifying LAMPS in the month of November to give a request for intention to procure. This starts a series of information and financial flows till end of the process. With the intention, LAMPS gives a figure for the area to be pruned. A target is fixed for procurement that is arrived at by averaging procurement of last 3 years + a 10% allowance. This along with the request for pruning results in release of first instalment that goes towards pruning operations. Then the prices are announced for procurement. The collection charges are fixed by an advisory committee comprising - Chairman and MD of TDCC, the PCCF, representatives of traders and LAMPS. This year the collection price has been pegged at Rs. 0.9 per 100 leaves.

With beginning of collection, TDCC goes on releasing the finances to pay the collection wages. In WB, the collectors sell leaves in the phad in bundles of 20 leaves after drying it for 2-3 days. For collection there is no concept of membership of LAMPS, just about anyone can collect KL and sale it at the phad. The payments are made every 2-3 days. In addition to regular staffs of LAMPS, additional seasonal staffs are employed to collect and process KL during this period. After adequate processing, KL is stored in LAMPS warehouses. Here the difference needs to be noted that the warehouses belong to LAMPS and not TDCC.

After proper information about the procurement, the task is handed over to TDCC to sell the KL stored in the godowns. TDCC sells KL by either inviting tenders or auctions. The bidders are mainly Rajasthani businessmen who hold a virtual monopoly over the trade in the state. The traders then sell it to the bidi manufacturing industries in and out of the state. Jhalda, a small town in Midinapore has a number of bidi manufacturing industries of the state.

After the sale, TDCC hands over surplus money realised (adjusted against the advance paid) to respective LAMPS after keeping 1% (of the sales) towards management expenses and interest @6% per annum for the money advanced earlier. The calculation is done taking one LAMPS as a unit.

The issues that need mention here is that though TDCC arranges finance (from the government), it does not give the full finance required for KL operations. It is the responsibility of LAMPS to get the finance organised for all other operations (mostly except collection wages). And neither TDCC nor the government receive any money from the KL operations except for the 1% management expenses to the former. And another thing to be noted is that like Orissa (and unlike Chhatisgarh, MP and AP), here the procurement is made on piece rates, but is sold on weight basis. The average sales price for last year has been Rs. 15-16 per Kg. KL collected from the pruned area is sold for about Rs. 18 per Kg, where as KL from non-pruned areas fetch Rs. 12 a Kg. Total sales turnover of KL came to about Rs. 8 million last year. Again it is to be noted that this is about 5% of total turnover of the bigger KL producing states like MP, Chhatisgarh and Orissa.

The role of forest department also needs a mention here. Being custodian of the forest, the monopoly rights is given by the forest department to TDCC and LAMPS for which the department gets annual royalty. TDCC keeps the forest division and range offices informed about the areas where KL operations take place. The department also issues transit permit for all transportation at the request of LAMPS.

The following graph gives the figures for KL procurement. As can be seen the procurement by KL is on a downward slide for the last 12 years.

Figure : Outturn of Kendu Leaf in WB (in MT)

Since the monopoly rights of TDCC extends only over forest areas of the state, the private owners of KL are free to sell their produce wherever they wish. There is a provision of a 3 member committee consisting of a LAMPS representative, the forest ranger and a PRI representative who have to certify that the leaf sold to the private agents are from private plots. This committee has not been functioning since ages. So as per the TDCC, though there is hardly any private land where KL grows these days, people exploit this clause to sell leaf procured from forest region to private parties. Of course, LAMPS also has a role to play by remaining passive or failing to procure all the KL available in their respective regions. In areas where FPCs are active, members collect the KL and deposit at the phads run by LAMPS. Then there are areas that are not covered by LAMPS, where collectors sale the produce to private traders.

In areas, where LAMPS are not active in collection, private traders buy the leaves from primary collectors and pay them more than the rates fixed by TDCC. This is also one of the reasons why LAMPS is not able to collect leaves. One bundle contains 20 KL and the rate of 1000 leaves is Rs 15/- (TDCC rate - Rs. 9). As LAMPS are not procuring leaves for last 2/3 years the villagers are not collecting in an organised way. After 4-5 days of collection the collection process should be stopped in order to get quality leaves but practically they collect upto a whole month or 35 days. Crucially, pruning has been suspended from the year LAMPS stopped collecting KL. This gives rise to the concern that quality of KL might deteriorate day by day.

In the initial phase the private traders collect leaves with high prices and in the later part the price goes down depending on the quality of leaves. The institutional arrangement for the trading of kendu leaves is given below.

Figure : Trade Channel of KL