Balisankhara: About 50 families belonging to the Turi community stay at Turipada in the Sagabahal panchayat of this block on the outskirts of Sundargarh district.
The community’s only source of income is making bamboo products. But the demand for bamboo products has fallen substantially as the market is flooded with cheap plastic and fibre substitutes.
The people here make bamboo household goods and sell them in markets to run their families.
Earlier, they used to get the main raw material, bamboo stems, easily from jungles, and there were many buyers for their products.
“The change in people’s preferences has spelled doom for us. Plastic and fibre products similar to what we make have flooded the market. These colourful products have entered even villages. Most people now prefer them,” some Turis said.
“Bamboo has become scarce. We have to buy from outside. Our families make household goods from bamboo stems. Sometimes it takes days to make a bamboo product,” the villagers said.
The people are reluctant to pay the price we fix to cover our labour and raw material costs. We know that they get more durable and cheaper plastic or fibre products, and there is no reason they should buy our products. We can neither compete with factory made products nor reduce the price of our products, they said.
The Turis are living a miserable life as they don’t have basic facilities. “We have no land. Due to this we are not able to get the benefits of government schemes,” said Sumani Turi, Ludhi Turi and Laka Turi.
“We have neither a school nor an anganwadi in our village. Whenever we go to the nearby anganwadi it affects our work,” they said.
“We have drinking water problem. As summer is coming, we expect a lot of hardship. Years back, a tube-well was dug in our village. Most of the time, it doesn’t work. Even if it works it spews out contaminated water,” they said, adding that they are forced to use dirty water from a pond nearby.
The elders complained that their village had not seen any government officials.
“We do not know how to add value to our products. If we are given training on how to make some other bamboo products that can fetch us a good price, our problems can be solved,” they said.
“During elections many leaders come. They promise a lot of things. After that none of their promises takes shape,” they said.
“We are determined not to be fooled this time. If our problems are not addressed we will boycott elections,” they added.
PNN