Livelihood

Vinod is a 30 year old respectable young tribal man. He belongs to a tribal community called Paliyar. Paliyar’s live in the Pazhani hills range of western ghats for thousands of years and entirely depend on the forest for their food, medicine and livelihood. They are basically hunters and gatherers who evolved even before the humanity has started practicing agriculture.    Even today, the Paliyars get into deep jungles to harvest honey, tubers and other wild herbs for their living. They bring quality honey from the jungle and sell it to the market for livelihood. On one such day while climbing a tree to collect mountain honey in the forest, Vinod slipped and fell down and injured his spinal cord and has been paralyzed for about nine years.   Behind the forest products that are bought by agents at very low cost and sold in the hands of the people at a huge profit lies the story of many young people like Vinod. During a conversation with Vinod and his friends, we had a conversation about value-added marketing of forest products direct to the consumers at good prices. We do not wish to be a middleman on their market. The tribes are the owners of the forest produce. It was discussed in the meeting that the women, physically challenged and the elders of the village who have less chances of employment shall start this initiative along with Vinod in value addition of their produce and directly put quality products in the hands of the people at fair prices.   We raised a small amount of fund for this initiative and kick started this process. Yes! Vinod is now an entrepreneur. He receives honey collected by his friends, neatly packs and sends it through courier to people. The people are developing a collective rural tribal economy with mutual participation. The consumers are happy about receiving a quality product at fair prices and also supporting for the development of tribal economy.   This year (2024-25) we managed to supply about more than 50 litres of wild honey direct to the consumers. This initiative has brought lots of hope to the community, some livelihood for Vinod and satisfaction for the society.