Gum Karaya – A Sustainable Livelihood Option

Kovel Foundation

PREFACE

India has a wealth of forest resource and millions of tribal people earn their livelihood from the collection and marketing of Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP). NTFPs are gathered and sold depending on their availability, market demand, availability of free time, etc. Some NTFPs like mohwa and tamarind are mostly available in their own lands; some are sourced from the wild. People walk for miles in the forest to collect gums, seeds, leaves, fibres, roots and other product and carry them back to the village, store it and where possible, process the produce before being sold.

GUMS AND GUM KARAYA

Gums are one of the large numbers of valuable NTFP in India. Gums are basically plant exudations that result partly from natural phenomena and partly from injury to the bark or stem. They are exuded by plants in liquid form and on exposure, dry into translucent tears, and remain stuck to the bark of the stem or branch.

Several species of plants yield gums. Some of the major gum-yielding species in Andhra Pradesh are: Sterculia urens, Cochlospermum religiosum, and Anogeissus latifolia. Sterculia urens yields Gum Karaya and locally it is called “Kovela, Thapsi, Kondathamara” etc in different regions of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Sterculia urens is deciduous and grows up to 15 meters usually in exposed hilly and rocky terrain. Its bark is a pale white and appears distinct from other trees in the forest.

In India, the Sterculia urens is rather widespread and found in the tropical Himalayas, West and Central India, the Deccan Plateau and throughoutthe Eastern and Western Ghats. Gum Karaya is a commercial gum found in abundance in the forests of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradeh, Chhathisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamilnadu. In Andra Pradesh, it is spread over 15 districts and supports around 10000 tribal families.

USES OF GUM KARAYA

Scientific uses

Gum Karaya is one of several ingredients used in the manufacture of large number of products. It is a natural stabilizer and thickener with a long history of safe use. It is used in the food industry; it also has medical/pharmaceutical and industrial applications based on its water swelling, viscosity and suspending properties.

Local uses

Locally, the raw white gum is mixed with sugar, soaked in water overnight and consumed in the early morning as a cooling agent. This drink is also used as relief from cracked feet. A mixture of sugar, coconut water and Gum Karaya is swallowed for reducing constipation. Indigenous people are known to use Gum Karaya mixed with water to reduce stomach ache.

CHALLENGES IN THE COMMERCE OF GUM KARAYA

Unscientific harvesting and processing practices

Gum Karaya has long been harvested by indigenous people by crude methods. Some of these destructive methods are: making multiple blazes on single tree, collecting the gum even from immature trees, making big blazes, using inappropriate tools like axe for blazing, using unclean cloth bags, aluminum containers and large leaves for carrying the gum home.

Usually, the collected gum is sun-dried on the surface directly and even heated on a fire during the monsoon to dry. The semi-dried or even wet gum is then sold to either middle men or the Girijan Cooperative Corporation (GCC) without proper processing and grading at the household level.

People do not realize that the gum is actually transparent or white in colour; the tree does not produce gum in three colours. It is the bad handling that results in gum degradation and discoloration. These crude tools and methods of harvesting have led to a low density of Gum Karaya trees in areas with a formerly rich population of this species. The quality of gum produced is also very low due to the unclean and unscientific methods of handling, drying and storage.

At the market place gum pickers get exploited mainly due to their lack of market information, especially about the grading of gums, the prices, weights and measures. The incomes they earned have therefore been low. Furthermore, the ecological and economic sustainability of Gum Karaya based livelihoods for the coming generation has become doubtful due to declining tree populations and an absence of efforts towards regeneration.

THE GUM KARAYA TRADE AND KOVEL FOUNDATION

The Girijan Cooperative Corporation is a public sector undertaking of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, established in the year 1956 for the socio economic development of indigenous people. The GCC is vested with monopoly rights over 24 NTFPs, including Gum Karaya, which is being procured in three grades. During early 1990s, the indigenous communities received Rs 30 per kg of Gum Karaya. However, the current prices are:

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Kovel Foundation (a trust by the Indigenous People for Research on Sustainable Technologies), Visakhapatnam in collaboration with GCC and other donors, addressed the above mentioned issues by organizing gum pickers into Girijan Gum Pickers Associations (GGPAs). In addition, capacity-building programmes, supply of tool kits and regular follow up action enabled the gum pickers to adopt a better package of practices in collection, processing and marketing of Gum Karaya. The Foundation also stressed on the regeneration of the gum trees and the improvement in quality of gum which led to better incomes by way of increased purchase prices.

Kovel Foundation has developed scientific methods of tapping, collection, transportation, handling, cleaning, grading, drying and storage of Gum Karaya. Kovel has also developed an improved tool kit consisting of sickle, polythene liners (big & small), forceps, bamboo basket and bamboo mat (for collection and drying).

GUM PICKERS’ RIGHTS

GCC pays a royalty to the Forest Department so as to secure monopoly rights to collect and market NTFPs from the forest areas. In the Scheduled Areas, the indigenous people have the right to collect NTFPs, including Gum Karaya. To make this process smooth, GCC issues a ‘Giri card’ to the identified gum pickers, which enables them to collect and sell the gum in the market.

LEARNING

The Foundation has been experienced a set of learning cycles. It has focused completely on Gum Karaya during 1994-99; extended its activities to other gums and resins from 99-02; further expanded to other NTFPs based livelihoods 2002- 06 and broadly to Tribal Livelihoods of both forest and farm since 2006 onwards.

The Foundation has evolved from a ‘training alone’ focused stage to a ‘packaged training with followup’; ‘supply of appropriate tools and collective marketing’. Similarly the ‘men only approach’ evolved to a ‘family centered approach’, and the ‘NTFP alone’ approach to ‘Livelihoods of the family’ approach.

CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED

Low literacy of tribal gum pickers, unorganized, exploitative markets, tapping of gum from wild source recognized as Common Property Resources (CPRs), small quantities, selling ungraded gum without adding value thereby low returns to the primary collectors, less number of gum tapping trees availability for the gum picking families are some of the critical challenges faced while implementing various development projects.

CONCLUSION

The Kovel Foundation has developed a set of package of practices with a focus on the sustainability of source plant and the produce. The gum tapping procedure has been improved and inculcated among the gum pickers to the extent that it does not have an adverse affect on the survival of the Gum Karaya tree.

In order to enhance Gum Karaya tree population in the years to come, Kovel has taken up raising Gum Karaya species by setting up nurseries at grassroots level. Since 2005-06, 50,000 saplings have been raised and planted in private lands of tribals. Efforts are on to set up nurseries in all the tribal concentrated districts and promote plantations at a large scale on a continuous basis for next 5 years. It has been planned to plant Gum Karaya saplings as border plantation in 1000 acres in the next 3 years (2010-13) in Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh.

The combined use of scientific and traditional expertise in making a detailed analysis for understanding and adherence to production, processing and market specifications, transfer of scientific know-how using professionals, local tribal youth as volunteers and local dialect with examples has contributed to the success of the case of Gum Karaya in increasing returns to tribal gum pickers.