Arpita Chakrabarty

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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The
names of all persons quoted here, except the government official, have been
changed to protect their identities; for the same reason, their
villages too have not been named. This is part two of a two-part story. 

“Keeda
jadi has transformed lives here,”
Sunil Singh says, while driving the taxi in which we are travelling. The
23-year-old has been plying the vehicle for two years, carrying passengers from
nearby villages to Dharchula, where they go to school or college, the market or
healthcare centre. Dharchula block is in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand, just a few metres from the India-Nepal border.

Sunil purchased the taxi, a Bolero, with the Rs. 3.5 lakhs he saved from
selling the expensive keeda jadi fungus, and by taking a bank loan.
He has been going with his family to pick the fungus since he was around eight
years old, and is repaying the loan from those earnings.

The ‘caterpillar fungus’ or keeda jadi grows in the alpine
meadows of the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,000 metres. Known as the ‘Himalayan Viagra’ for its aphrodisiacal
properties, the fungus – called yarsagumba  in China – is also
a valued ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. One kilo of top-grade keeda jadi can sometimes fetch as much as Rs. 12 lakhs in an
illegal cross-border trade. Most of the fungus harvested and sold in Uttarakhand
is smuggled by agents to Nepal and then to China.

The fungus harvesting season in Uttarakhand’s
high-altitude border districts of Pithoragarh and Chamoli starts in early May
and ends by the middle or end of June, with the arrival of the monsoon. Entire
families move to the meadows, staying in tents for weeks, working long and
arduous hours to collect the fungus. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/a-fungus-is-financing-families-in-pithoragarh">A fungus is
financing families in Pithoragarh</a>)

And they return with enough fungus to cover a chunk of the family’s
expenses for a considerable period of time. “It depends on how many pieces of keeda jadi you pick. The earnings last for a few months for
some families and provide sustenance for some for a year,” says Parvati Devi,
who is from the same village as Sunil. “This business
is risky and tough. But even educated people with college degrees have no
employment here. So everyone is involved in this work.” 

The agents or dealers usually arrive
in the villages in the months of September-October to collect the fungus; they
then use far-flung mountain routes to carry it across the border. “After we
return with our collection, we dry it, clean it, preserve it and then protect
it with our lives till the middlemen arrive. We live all year round on the
earnings from keeda
jadi. Without agriculture and jobs, it’s more precious to us than
gold,” says Anil Singh, a harvester.

Before the villagers discovered the
lucrative fungus, they depended on agriculture, daily wage labour or sheep-herding.
But agriculture is not a viable option in this rugged landscape. “The land is
not fertile; we mostly cultivate rajma and potatoes. If the harvest is good,
and that is rare, we sell some of the produce. Usually we keep it for our own
sustenance,” says Bhanu Singh. “The other option is manual labour through
MGNREGA but that isn’t as profitable as collecting keeda jadi.”  

Many also migrate in search of work.
But because of the caterpillar fungus, many of the villagers who earlier left
for the cities to work now head to the high altitude meadows of the Himalayas.

Young men like Sunil have purchased
taxis to earn an income during the rest of the year. “I have been in the forest
for only 16 days during this season, and I got 300 pieces,” he says. His
collection will fetch him at least Rs. 45,000.  His friend Mannu Singh, who is also travelling
with us, harvested 500 pieces. “I’m aiming for a minimum of Rs. 75,000,” Mannu
smiles.

In Sunil’s
village the signs of prosperity driven by the fungus trade are everywhere. New houses and shops have sprouted on the hillside. Many
villagers carry expensive smartphones with Nepali SIM cards – Indian mobile
networks rarely work here. “Keeda jadi has increased our household income manifold
and improved our economic condition. We can afford to have better food. We can even
afford to travel to Dehradun and Delhi for education and medical care,” says
14-year-old Manoj Thapa. He alone picked 450 pieces of the fungus in the 2017
season. 

I am told that a few young adults in the village have
joined coaching classes in Dehradun for the civil service exams – keeda jadi funds are covering the fees. Many families
from this region are from the Scheduled Tribes, and joining the civil services is a
dream for many of them, made a little more possible by the reserved seats for STs. But it&#39;s a
dream they could barely afford to train for until the keeda jadi trade took off.

In June 2013, when floodwaters from a glacier damaged agricultural land
in the village, the villagers rebuilt their lives largely with fungus funds.
“It was only possible due to keeda jadi,” says Bhanu Singh, who used his fungus earnings
for a lavish marriage ceremony for his elder daughter in 2016. He has also
constructed an impressive house with three rooms.

But all this enthusiasm has a downside. In the last few years, violence
and disputes have erupted between villages over accessing common pastures like the
Satper meadow. “In common pastures,
several families even from Haldwani
and Lalkuan hunt for keeda jadi. So the harvest per family comes
down and people fight over access to the meadows,” says Lal Singh. 

“When too many families join the hunt in the same area, the collection
of each family drops. But we don’t report the fights to the police because we
will land up in jail,” adds Bhanu Singh. He and his family collected
around 1,400 pieces of fungus last year at Satper and brought them back in old
glass jars – the sale price was at least Rs. 2 lakhs.

The demand for yarsagumba reportedly shot up in 1993 when three Chinese
athletes broke five world records at the Beijing National Games after regularly
consuming a tonic apparently made from the fungus. In 1999, China
classified the fungus as an endangered species. Soon after, the
fungus-picking made its way to India. “In the [early] 2000s, we saw Tibetan khampas searching
for the fungus in pastures on the Indian side. They said it could rarely be
found in Tibetan territory any more. They searched unexplored Indian territory
and asked us to help them,” says 41-year-old Krishna Singh. The market price at the time for the keeda jadi was modest. But by around 2007, the trade became
lucrative, attracting many more harvesters.   

But the fungus ‘gold
rush’ across some 300 impoverished villages in Pithoragarh and Chamoli
districts might be fading. Some research studies
state that due to climate change and excessive harvesting, which has increased
the footfall and human impact on the alpine grasslands, the fungus yield from
the Tibetan Plateau has shrunk by 10-30 percent in the last three decades.

Just as the khampas
had to look for newer pastures, the fungus harvesters of Uttarakhand are
having to look further too. The villagers say the fungus can now only be found
at higher altitudes, compared to easy pickings at lower heights a few years
ago. “We don’t find as much keeda jadi as
we used to 10 years ago,” says Lal Singh. “In a few more years, perhaps we won’t
find any in the places we frequent right now. We will have to keep moving
higher and higher.”

The Uttarakhand government is
planning to try and regulate the trade and prevent over-exploitation of the
fungus. Ranjan Mishra, the chief conservator of
forest, Uttarakhand, says, “We have sent a new proposal to the  Centre. We can’t stop picking and selling of the fungus. What
we can do is regulate it through well-framed policies so that both the state
and people can benefit from it. ”

The new policy, Mishra says, proposes registering every
harvester with the van panachayat (forest councils
managed by village communities) or forest range office with their
Aadhaar or voter identification card. The person will disclose the days he/she
will spend collecting keeda jadi and
in which particular area of the forest range. He/ she also has to disclose the
amount of keeda
jadi they have collected. “For
every 100 gram, the forest department will charge a royalty of Rs. 1,000. The
buyer is then free to sell it to van panchayats or
any third party. It then becomes legal to sell it,” Mishra says.  “The alpine meadows are ecologically fragile.
So when the policy comes into effect, we will know how much it is harvested in
the state, and what&#39;s happening in the region.”

Meanwhile, the rising demand and the
difficulties of finding the fungus have increased its market price several
times in the past decade – only making it more attractive for the fungus-gatherers.

The 'gold rush' in Pithoragarh's mountains

പിതോറഗഢ് മലനിരകളിലെ ‘സ്വർണ്ണവേട്ട’

பைத்தோராகார் மலைகளில் தங்க வேட்டை

ପିଥୋରଗଡ଼ ପର୍ବତରେ ସୁନାର ଭିଡ

পিথোরাগড়ের পাহাড়ে ‘স্বর্ণ খনি’র সন্ধানে

पिथोरागढच्या पर्वतराजीतील ‘सोन्याची खाण’

Chifaltara

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The 'gold rush' in Pithoragarh's mountains

A lucrative illegal trade in the caterpillar fungus has brought some prosperity to the high-altitude villages of Uttarakhand, but it has also led to disputes and a negative ecological impact on the alpine grasslands

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