Yoga guru Baba Ramdev is keen to purchase aloe vera and gooseberries from the forests of Maharashtra. In a meeting with state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar on Tuesday, the baba assured the state that he would start a Patanjali food court in Nagpur that would be bigger than the one in Haridwar once they will finalise the agreement between them.
According to Mr Mungantiwar, the forests of the state are rich in Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) species including medicinal plants. “We have started a Jan Dhan Van Dhan outlet at Nagpur through which the Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMC) sells forest produce with cheaper rate. They have sold various items worth Rs 6 lakh within the last three months,” Mr Mungantiwar said.
He added this is not sufficient because the medicinal products are vast and the income made from their sale is very low compared to the costs of production. “To change the scenario and expand the market, I met Baba Ramdev today and discussed various possibilities. He is very happy and said he would purchase various items in bulk quantity once the terms of business are decided,” he said.
“It was a primary discussion. We are expecting a guarantee of the sale of products from Baba Ramdev, because if we, say, produce one lakh honey bottles and he cancels the order, it will be a loss for JFMC,” he said. “The state government’s role is to support JFMC and nothing else. The profit margin will go into the pocket of JFMC only,” he added.
The state forest department has established 12,517 JFMCs in 15,500 villages near various forests of Maharashtra. Members of the JFMC are allowed to collect NTFP available in the areas assigned to them for their bona fide consumption.
Youths from core and buffer zone of reserved forest are trained to produce medicinal products from forest and there are 92 raw drugs processed and marketed in the local sale counters. Along with the medicinal herbs, certain value-added products such as mahua jam and sharbat, aloe vera products and bija glass are also being marketed by the JFMC.
