CHENNAI: The search for sustainability has held strong among urban consumers over the past years. From replacing offthe- counter vegetables with organic ones, trading in cheap cosmetics for chemical-free versions and selectively sourcing handmade garments, they find different ways to incorporate the good, the wholesome and the holy.
Yet, for all this effort, little has changed for the makers of these merchandise, who find themselves still restrained by anonymity, lack of agency, policies that are far removed from ground reality and dwindling opportunities. Life of panai erigal (palm pickers) is no different.
That is why even as you may be paying a good Rs 400-Rs 500 at the local shop for a hunk of karupatti (palm jaggery), you are not likely to know that many palm pickers in the southern belt get a measly Rs 100- Rs 150 for the same product they are forced to sell to middlemen and wholesale traders. That’s also why you may not know that the entire value chain around palm work continues to decline, depriving the rural economy of revenue in crores.
A day in the life of...
Despite the diminishing returns, there’s still around 10 lakh people in the state who are dependent on the tree — the official tree of Tamil Nadu — for their livelihood. In a trade that is passed on from one generation to another, skills come from what you observe and pick up when you start young. As with 58-year-old Thirumal, who has been at it since he was 12 years old.
“My father used to do this work, so did his parents; we learnt it by going along with him to the forest (panai kaadu) and watching what they do. In this part of the state (southern regions), we only use the thala naaru (rope) on our feet, whereas those in the Salem regions use a belt too. While they hang from beneath the head of the tree to collect the milk, we work through it,” he explains.
And it all begins here — be it pathaneer (Neera) or karupatti. In Villupuram’s Narasinganur, Pandiyan (41) breaks down a typical day of a palm picker. Monsoon is not the time for the job. The trees, of which the state is estimated to have over five crore, do not yield enough milk for any of its primary products. During the season that stretches from mid-January to the end of July, however, there’s work to be done all day long. “We begin the day at 4 am by bringing down the first round of pathaneer.
There are trees that yield 10-15 litres; then, there are those that give only 1-2 litres. This is then sold within the next two hours. What’s leftover is made into karupatti. In the afternoon, we climb up the trees and cut them once more so that the milk does not turn hard under the sun. In the evening, we bring down the pathaneer once again. There usually isn’t much sale in the evening. So, we boil what’s left of the pathaneer and add it to the next morning’s leftovers to make karupatti,” he elaborates.
Problems aplenty
As simple as it sounds, the job — every part of it — is arduous. For starters, it’s physically demanding. And with more and more people leaving this line of work for greener pastures, there are fewer young men in the trade. Karuppuchamy is 55 years old. Yet, not a day goes by when he doesn’t have to climb up and down at least 20 trees to get the job done, says his son Selvakumar. “If you want more yield, you do have to climb more trees.
Sometimes, it’s as many as 30-40 trees. Ellam namma theramai thanunga; interest irukonamga. It has gotten more difficult for my father but he keeps at it,” he says. “A single tree would provide enough for only 100 grams or so of karupatti. We’d have to climb 15-20 trees over a period of time to get an assured yield of 10 kilos of karupatti. We sell this to traders, who then sell it in the market. Very little of it is sold directly, when someone in the village asks for it.
Finding ways to market the product outside, in cities, is not easy. Besides, we would be indebted to traders, having borrowed from them during the off-season for weddings and whatnot. So, when there’s a means of an income, we use that to settle our debt with the traders. Otherwise, we run on loans and borrowed money,” shares Thirumal. Karuppuchamy, too, goes the same way; traders come by once a week to collect the produce.
While this is more or less the status quo in the southern belt, districts in the north have a little more success with direct sales. They are less likely to be dependent on middlemen and wholesale traders. Pandiyan is one of them — he sells out all the karupatti he makes without a hitch; sometimes, there’s simply too much demand for him to meet with his unit.
Bane of a ban
Yet, in these parts of the state, trouble comes in the form of law enforcement. The blanket ban on kal (toddy) finds ways to interfere with their day to day workings, says Pandiyan. “During my grandfather’s times, they were to freely extract kal and sell it. By the time my father took over, toddy was banned in the state. It was around that time that many people left this line of work.
It was for this reason that my father didn’t actively encourage me to pick up this work. (It was only three years ago that Pandiyan returned to the ancestral job after having suffered some losses in farming endeavours.) Now, even if we sell only pathaneer, the cops — be it for the bribe they get out of this or for any other reason — assault and insult us; they file cases accusing us of having brewed sarayam (illicit liquor),” he details, adding that things have improved to a certain extent — given that he only deals with pathaneer — over the past few years.
Past all these hurdles, it is still a challenge to make this work profitable. The only thing that allows them that certainty. “But, our unified desire is to allow the sale of kal. This work is less strenuous, it sells as soon as we extract it and it gives money right away,” he says.
Taking the fight forward
Himakiran of Tamilnadu Kal Kootamaippu (one of the many organisations leading the fight), who has worked extensively in the area of organic farming and rural economy, has much to say about how the ban makes little sense in a state where lakhs of people depend on the livelihood it has to offer. “Kal is the primary product of palm; its core business. The work they get with pathaneer, panai olai, ola kottaan, etc., is all peripheral. And there’s no market for these products any more either.
Banning toddy is akin to depriving the sale of rice for paddy farmers, while expecting them to work with what they get out of the hay. If that were the case, who would raise paddy?” he questions. In a state that had over 50 lakh people making money out of this trade, now, barely 8-10 lakh people find jobs here, points out Vishwanathan, a fellow member of the Kootamaippu. “There’s no means to create 50 lakh new jobs in the new few years.
Yet, removing the ban on kal could do just that. Kal guarantees daily income for the workers. They will find direct customers for pathaneer and karupatti as long as they have people coming to them for kal. Now, it is the traders who control the business entirely, at least in the south belt. This leaves room for adulteration too; even in a place like Udangudi where the karupatti comes with a GI tag,” he explains. But, the biggest scam of it all was to tag kal as an alcoholic substance, points out Himakiran.
“Kal is food; it is consumed in the morning before people head off to work. If it were alcoholic, who would allow this practice? That is the problem. This is why we have come together to form the Tamilnadu Kal Kootamaippu, putting forth 11 demands — the major ones being to lift the ban, to allow panai erigal to sell it themselves, letting co-ops societies to do it on a larger scale and beyond that, for the government to procure and make it available in the cities or export it.
If our neighbouring state of Kerala can do it, why can’t we? This amounts to blocking revenue of several crores of rupees,” he details. With the elections coming up in less than six months, they are trying to push this agenda through — to get toddy off the ban. On your part, you can sign up for the signature campaign they are set to roll out soon, he says. Pandiyan, on his part, says that there is room to return to a harmonic state of interdependency with the panai thozhil.
“Be it our house or the things we use in it, we can make it out of palm and its products. It also gives food — kal, pathaneer, nungu, panam pazham, kizhangu — round the clock. We can add more value to it and get it to more people. Palm also allowed for a healthy barter system. Earlier, we used to make sambhu (umbrella made with palm fronds) and sell it; not for money but for farm produce or similar products. This allowed for all that; even now, we can adopt such a life with this work,” he suggests. Perhaps, this time next year, that might be our reality.