hopebuilding

Indian women beat poverty trap with thriving business in traditional medicines

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Tribal women in Chattisgarh beat the poverty trap with fortunes from traditional medicines

A group of women in a remote village in the northern part of India’s Chhattisgarh state are turning traditional medicinal knowledge into a thriving business that makes medicines from the herbs found in surrounding forests. In just a year, they have gone from being impoverished agricultural labourers to prosperous entrepreneurs, earning Rs 15 lakh (about $37,000 US) in one year.

More than 1,100 varieties of herbs are found in the forested area that makes up about 44% of the state, and the state government promotes the area as a herbal cornucopia.

In 2002, Ramfal Patel, a young villager who trained with the Shanti Kunj ayurvedic institute at Haridwar, Uttarakhand, began helping the state forest department identify and preserve herbs. “Chhattisgarh has an abundance of herbs and medicinal plants. The villagers know their medicinal value, but not the commercial potential. I just showed them how to exploit that,” he says.

In 2006, in Donganala, about 20 women formed a self-help group named Haribol. The women collect the herbs from the forest and grow some in nurseries, and process and package them with technical assistance from Patel.

The group began with 30 products, of which medicines for cold, diabetes, joint pains and indigestion, and herbal products such as tea, face packs, toothpaste, honey and chyawanprash are much in demand. “The compositions are certified by a registered ayurvedic practitioner and approved by a government lab,” Patel says. The group’s yagna products are also in demand—selling up to 1,100 kg a month, fetching about Rs 75,000 (approximately $1,870 USD). “We are self-sufficient now,” says the group’s secretary, Uma Yadav.

In the last four months, Haribol received orders for products worth Rs 8 lakh (approximately $19,925 USD), and the womens’ confidence is high. “As the business grows, we will soon expand our product portfolio,” says Subhmati. “Our products have carved a niche. Now there is no looking back,” says Yadav.

Help from the state government was crucial. The State Herbal Medicine Board, which promotes cultivation of and trade in herbal medicinal plants, gave Rs 1.2 lakh (approximately $2,988 USD) as seed money. As business grew, the forest department provided a dryer, a grinding machine and a building for packaging medicines, and the government provided access to its statewide chain of herbal goods stores, Sanjeevani. Last year the group installed a transformer using its own funds, so the area’s frequent power cuts do not disrupt its work anymore.

Haribol is one of three all-women self-help groups in the state to take up large-scale preparations of ayurvedic medicines and honey, and the groups’ success is already inspiring people in the region. Two groups have, in fact, been formed in the same village, one engaged in handicrafts and the other in vermicomposting. “People are now realising the potential of their forest herbs,” says Patel.

“Under the state government’s herbal farming initiative, the forest department has been engaged in herb protection and development in the area since 2002. But it is only now, after local communities have started participating in the initiative, that the true potential of herbs and herbal farming is being realised,” says Shaligram Sai, sub-divisional officer in Korba.

This story was adapted from an article by Rajendra Mohanty, published 18 February 2008 in Down to Earth, India’s only science and environmental magazine, which is published every two weeks by the Society for Environmental Communications in New Delhi, India. The article was distributed through OneWorld SouthAsia. Korba district has its own website. The lakh to dollar conversions come from http://coinmill.com/INR_USD.html

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