Botanists call it Dyospyros melanoxylon. Manufacturers call it beedi. Traders call it profits, politicians call it power, and the poor call it survival. Everybody else calls it tendu patta and it is the leaf that can change governments in Madhya Pradesh. As an issue, it may not have had the high profile of Ayodhya in the 1993 assembly elections in this state. Yet, few within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) harbour illusions about the damage it caused them when the then chief mnister, Sunderlal Patwa, sought to undermine the cooperatived collection of tendu. His moves hit the very poor and benefited a handful of private traders to the extent of crores of rupees. Some of the beneficiaries were top functionaries of the BJP at the state level. 'The party received the bill for these actions through the ballot boxes', says one anti-Patwa BJP member bitterly. 'The undoing of the cooperatives, returning monopoly powers to private interests like the traders, hurt people for whom this is the lifeline.' Usually, it's just beedis that go up in smoke. Where this leaf is concerned, sometimes it's governments.
P Sainath, 'Everybody Loves a Good Drought'
