How much Khair is India left with?

As kattha manufacturing winds down in Uttar Pradesh and picks up in Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal and Arunachal, how is the tree doing?

The second part of this series on the health of India’s native forests looked at the Khair trade in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The tree, whose heartwood is in great demand by the chewing tobacco industry, has vanished from most of the state. All the consequences of timber trafficking — habitat destruction; biodiversity losses; falls in government revenue due to tax evasion; rise of criminal syndicates with political patronage that suborn government officials and silence critics — have consequently fallen upon the state. Were state-specific factors responsible for UP’s failure to curb illegal khair trade? Or is this a pan-India problem? Part three of our series looks at Himachal Pradesh (HP), India’s latest production centre for kattha.

A Khair boom

In May 2023, Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu announced that India’s Supreme Court had allowed Khair felling in 10 divisions of the state’s forests. “The silviculture felling of khair trees (is) better for forest management and rejuvenation, besides revenue generation for the state exchequer,” said Sukhu that day.

It was a striking statement. Forests, around for millions of years, do not need silviculture to “rejuvenate” themselves. His second claim about revenue generation fell apart as well on looking at Himachal Pradesh’s schedule of rates for Khair. In 2011, the state’s forest department’s rate for Khair stood at ₹21,000/cubic metre. While CarbonCopy’s email to the state forest department asking for the latest government rate for Khair went unanswered, an IFS officer working at Dehradun’s Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy pegged it at “about ₹80,000-₹90,000 per cubic metre”. Another forest official working in the state corroborated this number, saying: “For girth 90cm and above, the rate went more than ₹1 lakh in the last auction.” As seen in the second part of this series, however, even these numbers are a fraction of each cubic metre’s eventual value.

That is just the start. While Sukhu said Himachal will log no more than 16,500 khairs every year from the five forest divisions where the Supreme Court first allowed felling, people in the kattha industry say as many as 40 new kattha factories have come up in Himachal Pradesh alone. “Most of them have come up near the towns of Una, Ant, Nalagarh and Baddi,” said Khalilullah, the owner of a kattha factory at Masupur, Uttar Pradesh. 

With Kattha factories, like the ones he had set up in J&K, needing as much 20,000 cubic metres of Khair and firewood each year, and it taking about two trees to produce a cubic metre — it wasn’t clear either if the state’s planned supply could meet demand.

As things stood, though, Sukhu’s announcement was another reminder of India’s rising appetite for Khair. Kattha, made by boiling the tree’s heartwood, is a key input for the country’s chewing tobacco industry. 

In recent years, faced with dwindling Khair in states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Kattha manufacturers have begun shifting to J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and parts of India’s north-east. “At this time, 20% of Khair comes from J&K,” said Khaliullah. “As much as 40-60% comes from HP.  The rest comes from states like Uttarakhand and Haryana.”

A large question lies here. Demand from Kattha factories is seen as a major reason why states like UP now have far less Khair than before. Its forest department — beset by understaffing; low patrolling; policy decisions to not capture maximal value from Khair to squeeze profits out of illegal logging; and corruption inside the department — couldn’t rein in the illegal logging of Khair. Today, as this industry takes root in newer states, will India lose Khair from these forests as well?

The big question

As the first part of this series said, Himachal Pradesh has seen industrial logging from 1864 onwards. To ensure trees didn’t go extinct, however, the British only felled large trees and left some mother trees for regeneration. In addition, the interval and diameter for harvest varied according to species with no tree less than 10 cm diameter harvested.

Even after independence, some of these guardrails lasted. Khair was logged only in the winter months. In 1975, the forest department did away with logging concessions and began, as in UP, logging itself. In 1995, the Himachal Pradesh high court, blasting the state government for approving kattha factories without ascertaining khair stocks in state forests, prohibited it from setting up further kattha factories. In 1996, the trees won a larger reprieve when the Supreme Court banned the felling of healthy trees in forests.

Riding on these protections, the state held on to its Khair population. “In districts like Bilaspur, Una and Nalagarh, 1/5th of the forest will be Khair,” said the IFS officer at the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy. 

In 2018, however, after a plea by the state government, the Supreme Court amended its order and allowed an experimental felling of 75% of Khair trees with 25 cm diameter and above with the remaining 25% (>20 cm) retained as mother trees. And then, in 2023, in the order mentioned at the start of this article, the apex court amended that order and allowed the felling of Khair in 10 forest divisions of Himachal Pradesh. Amongst them, Una, Nalagarh and Paonta Sahib.

A paradox lies here. In 1995, at a time when Himachal Pradesh had more forests than today, its high court had told its government to not allow any more kattha factories saying the state didn’t have enough Khair to support all of them. Today, as new Kattha factories take root in the state, how are they sourcing the timber they need? How equipped is the state forest department to deter illegal felling?

The view from Paonta Sahib

Trying to understand this, CarbonCopy went from Chandigarh towards the holy town of Paonta Sahib, a route that vends past two older kattha factories at Kala Amb and Misserwala, hoping to understand how competitive dynamics in the Kattha trade have changed – and how all these plants are sourcing Khair.  

The story we found was predictable. In Paonta Sahib, too, politically powerful people run the kattha trade; and illegal logging of Khair is underway. “Loggers are using power saws to cut trees,” a forest officer who has worked in Paonta Sahib told CarbonCopy. “It takes them no more than 10-15 minutes to cut a tree, remove its branches, and load it.”

As in Suhelwa, logging contractors, known as Labour Supply Mates (LSM) in Himachal, cut more trees than they are meant to. “If there are 100 trees in a lot, 10/15 of those will be unmarked but felled,” said the forest officer. There is, however, an additional wrinkle. 

Loggers are also under-supplying from the trees stipulated for logging. 

Before issuing a logging tender, the local forest department estimates likely timber yield. “The 100 cubic metres we estimate as standing volume reduces to 60 cubic metres by the time timber reaches the depot after logging,” said the official. “Contractors are retaining the thickest parts of the trunk and sending us the lops, tops and other low quality timber. That is our recovery — 55-60%. I have never seen a 65% recovery.”

Apart from these, LSMs are also said to be gaming forest auctions. “When there is an auction, 10 or more LSMs bid — and they all bid the same amount,” said the forest officer. “There was one lot in Hamirpur where 40 LSMs bid the same amount.” Once there is a tie, he said, the forest department goes for a lucky draw. “This is a strange system,” he said. “Such uniform pricing raises the likelihood of bid rigging or collusive bidding. Further, using a lucky draw, even among equally placed bidders, undermines the very purpose and intent of the Competition Act, 2002.”

Talking to locals, the reasons for these malfeasances are easy enough to fathom. The state government’s decision to allow private entities to log in the forest — as opposed to the forest department itself — is one problem. ““The only people who should go into a forest are the rights-holders,” said another forest officer who has worked in HP’s forest corporation, which oversees felling operations. “Only their biotic pressure is understandable. But now, with tendering, contractors, too, have access to the forest.”

Further, the absence of field verification by forest department officers — of the trees to be cut; of the volume of trees that have been cut — makes it easier for LSMs to get away with under-delivery. “Officials are not going to the lots to calculate standing volume,” said the official who has worked in the state’s forest corporation, “These numbers are being filled in from historical records.”

Finally, most of the forest guards hail from Paonta Sahib itself. “Only the officers come from other districts,” he told CarbonCopy. “This creates its own problems. The timber trade is controlled by powerful people. And these forest guards cannot risk their enmity. We have 58 forest guards. And of these, maybe five act impartially.”

For such reasons, as at Suhelwa, even if traffickers are caught, it is usually the lower rungs in the trafficking supply chains. The people higher up rarely get affected. This is Veerappan redux. The people he sold sandalwood and ivory to escaped scrutiny.

CarbonCopy wrote to the HP Forest Department and its office at Paonta Sahib asking it to comment on these charges. This article will be updated when they respond. 

A requiem to the Khair

In Himachal, too, consequently, there is a lot of chatter about illegal felling of Khair.
Given such complaints, the National Green Tribunal ordered an enquiry last year into illegal felling of Khair. And yet, trafficking continues. 

Even a cursory internet search throws up links like the ones that follow. Between January and February, about 40 Khairs were cut in Nurpur Forest division. In March, two people were held with 44 logs of illegal Khair in Una. In the same month, as many as 5,000 Khair were cut in Trilokpur. In April, 30 trees were felled in Behral. In May, a vehicle carrying 58 logs of khair without proper documentation was intercepted in Sirmaur. In June, as many as 150 vehicles pulled khair out of a protected area in the state’s Ratnapur Forest section — transit permits had been given for five vehicles. In July, traffickers were caught in Dharamshala with 300 logs of Khair. While forest officers pegged its worth at ₹15 lakh in the market, as the second part of this series has shown, its eventual value would have been much higher.

Variants of this story are playing out nationally. Illegal logging of Khair has picked up in Reasi, J&K, as well. There too, the forest bureaucracy has been accused of complicity. Reports also suggest that kattha factories are sourcing Khair from farther and farther away — from Arunachal to Assam; from Jharkhand to Haryana; from MP to Haryana; one could go on. Even as these timber flows continue, we can neither quantify the scale of khair extraction nor the number of Khairs that survive in India. 

Working plans are outdated across India. “Working plans are made for a certain number of years after which they have to be rewritten,” said wildlife biologist BC Chowdhury. “But now, if you look at the last 3 working plans, I would not be surprised if you will find the same sentences and numbers. If a working plan for 1990 said 11,152 khair, the reports for 2000 and 2010 will repeat that. In effect, we are losing trees without knowing what really exists.”

There is, however, one sure-shot indicator that the number of Khair in India is coming down.

“Ninety percent of Khair is used by the Kattha industry,” Ram Shekhar Shukla, who used to trade in Khair at Suhelwa, had told CarbonCopy. Despite a steep increase in the number of new kattha factories in India, pegged by Khalilullah at 20 in J&K alone, with another 40 coming up between Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, kattha prices are not dropping due to heightened competition or a sudden surge in the supply of one input for a trade growing at 4.6%. They are rising instead. 

Take Doon Kattha Udyog at Misserwala, the local kattha factory at Paonta Sahib. “Our 20 kilo boxes used to cost ₹25,000 per box three years ago,” said an employee at the plant. “It has since climbed to ₹35,000 and then to ₹41,000/box.” At Khari Baoli too, prices have risen by ₹200/kilo over the past two years. “Ped kam ho rahey hain (there are fewer trees),” said Ranglal at Chaurasia’s shop. “There are more factories but fewer trees.” 

The trade sees what the forest department won’t.

As the first part of this series said, Himachal Pradesh has seen industrial logging from 1864 onwards. To ensure trees didn’t go extinct, however, the British only felled large trees and left some mother trees for regeneration. In addition, the interval and diameter for harvest varied according to species with no tree less than 10 cm diameter harvested.

The picture this conjures up is scary. As the tree dwindles, kattha prices will rise further. Especially since demand from the pan masala industry keeps growing. With that, competition between kattha factories will get more fierce as they race to make their profits while Khair stocks last. In other words, we could well be seeing the final days of the Khair in India. One of its functions, as a riverine tree, is to protect riverbanks from erosion. As the tree vanishes even as climate change intensifies, expect faster disintegration of hillsides. All to support a trade where firms evade taxes and whose product causes oral cancer.

(Part Four: The story of Khair is the story of all commercially attractive trees. Given the forest department’s incapacity to protect these, how are India’s native forests doing?)

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M Rajshekhar

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