Lotus growing in the ponds and small water bodies around Labhpur and Ahmedpur in Birbhum district, West Bengal, India, has become an important livelihood for many families. In the festival season the flowers go to Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai, and through various firms to the United States, Germany, Thailand and Japan, with demand in Nepal and Bhutan too, the Kolkata daily Sangbad Pratidin reports.
Demand rises several-fold before the festivals, so many traders outside the state rely on Birbhum's lotuses. Dipankar Haldar, Prasanta Das and Goutam Mondal, lotus growers and middlemen in Ahmedpur, said flowers are collected from villages across the Labhpur area and dispatched far afield through Ahmedpur station.
The profit is not shared evenly along the way. Middlemen buy a lotus from growers for Rs 2.5 to 3 and supply shops at Rs 5 to 6. In the state's retail markets a flower costs Rs 7 to 10, and in big cities in other states Rs 13 to 20. Traders say a lotus can sell for $2 to $5 abroad, about Rs 150 to 400.
Alongside the pride in exports, growers complain of losses to heavy rain and drought and of not getting a fair price, though trade has picked up as the season begins, the paper says.
Reported by Jaba Sen for Sangbad Pratidin.
Photo (illustrative): a lotus pond on a farm in West Bengal. Photo: Arne Hückelheim / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Sangbad Pratidin
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