Bamboo and kendu power to the people

Remote villages in Odisha assert their rights over forest resources, transforming their livelihoods and challenging government control.

Tucked away in the hills of Kalahandi in western Odisha, the tiny village of Palki is so remote that it is barely a dot on the map. With just 57 tribal households and no proper road or public transport, reaching Palki is a challenge. Here, no one has studied beyond class 8, and generations here have grown up in hardship. Making ends meet was a daily struggle.

Over the past couple of years though, something has changed. Palki is now flushed with a community fund of ₹8 lakh. Alok Majhi, 27, the barely-schooled secretary of the Palki Gram Sabha, is looking for a teacher to tutor school-going children during the summer vacation, offering a monthly remuneration of ₹6,000, unthinkable just a few years ago.

Two years ago, the villagers had struck a direct deal with a trader from Maharashtra, earning ₹26 lakh for two years of bamboo supply. Palki’s transformation began when its people decided to take charge of forest resources — especially bamboo and kendu (used in bidis) — under the rights granted to them by the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The earlier system entailed government intermediaries that would regulate prices. Now, the village is writing its own story of change.

Forty kilometres from Palki, and not as remote, Pipadi is another village nestled in Kalahandi’s forested belt, that stretches across over 2,500 km. A paramilitary camp has just sprung up on its outskirts, reportedly to curb the movement of  Maoist extremists. Between government and Naxal forces, Pipadi, with just 45 households, manages 4,300 acres of forestland on its own terms.

For the past five years, Pipadi has been selling bamboo worth ₹5-7 lakh annually. It even issues its own transit passes for truckloads of bamboo headed to Telangana, an act of local governance rarely seen in such remote pockets. This stand is echoing across 100 villages in Kalahandi.

Elsewhere too — though not yet as organised as in Kalahandi — forest dwellers in Nayagarh, Kandhamal, Koraput, Malkangiri, Rayagada, and Mayurbhanj districts of Odisha are beginning to assert their rights over forest resources, challenging barriers long imposed by the Forest Department.

In early May 2025, forest dwellers blocked National Highway 26 at Ampani in Kalahandi district after the Forest Department stopped movement of two kendu-leaf-laden trucks permitted by Borapadar and Pipalchhapar Gram Sabhas.