Soft music flits through the air and as you get involved with the ambience of an air-conditioned, dimly-lit restaurant, a waiter serves you your favourite soup. Sipping the steaming hot bamboo shoot soup, chances of you thinking about tribals Mosabani block are not very high. For a connoisseur, shelling out an exorbitant rate for this exotic dish may be nothing new, but it is the source of livelihood for tribals inhabiting
the land 70 km from Jamshedpur. Bamboo shoots known as Korol are brought to cities as a part of an exotic menu. For tribals, though, it forms a part of their staple diet.

Korol grows during monsoon and tribals let the shoots grow to a height of four feet before the they are uprooted. The shoot is distinctly cut for use ? what comes to the city market is the whole shoot, while tribals prefer to chop it before using it. The thinly-chopped bamboo shoots are used either to prepare vegetables or are processed to make pickle.

The metamorphosis of bamboo to delicious pickle is pretty interesting. It tells stories of the grit and determination of tribals and NGOs. ?From making bamboo available to providing sheds to tribals to make articles during summer ? everything had to be dealt with. Women played a crucial role for upgrade of infrastructure. The problem of providing saplings was the first thing that we needed to tackle,? explained Shubhra Dwivedi, head, Socio-economic and Educational Development Society (Seeds), the NGO working with tribals of the the Mosabani block.

Bamboo is not just a part of their lives, the Mahali tribes thrive on this. They specialise in making articles of bamboo plants, but the circumstances in which these tribals live, they can barely afford to get a stick. ?Bamboo trees are grown, but then we are too poor to grow them, neither do we have land nor are we financially competent to buy saplings,? said Raja Mahali. So the only option left with them is to go to richer tribals of Mosabani block. ?Each bamboo stick costs between Rs 20 and 30 and the hard-pressed villagers can only buy one at a time. With that one bamboo stick, they used to make a few baskets and then walk long distances to sell them, something that would not even cover their investments. So a need-assessment survey was drawn,? said Dwivedi.

Tribal women from Kadamghuttu, Jahirghuttu and Mahalisai formed a self-help group. With ideas and assistance from the NGO, the tribals drew up a list of the various things that they could make from bamboo sticks, but the problem of capital impeded their growth.

?A decision was taken to provide them with the initial raw material. We send them to various places to choose from varieties of bamboos required for different articles. Five bamboo sticks were provided to each member of the self-help group. The tribals opting for thin, forest bamboo got to work after acquiring their initial capital. With dexterous fingers and rapt concentration the women set down to shave bamboo sticks into thin films. This would soon take shape of a basket.

?Tribals completely did away with middlemen. Now, they could go to villages and the haats to sell their articles instead of shelling out money to middlemen, who would walk away with most of the profit,? Dwivedi said. To train tribals, a team of artisans from Manipur is being roped in by NGOs of the city. ?The idea is to help them realise the number of things that can be made from bamboo so that they can increase productivity and profits,? she added. The team is likely to arrive after Diwali. Dwivedi believes these tribal women will have a brighter future once they are trained.

Savvy Soumya