Tulsi evangelists

Kailash Nath Singh is not one of the biggest farmers in his village but he is used to the flashing bulbs and is proficient at posing for snaps. He is also used to talking to foreigners in ‘Hinglish’, much to the envy of his neighbours. The Kamhenpur village resident of Azamgarh district is something of an icon in his community and that’s not just because of his impressive house or the fact that even at 85, he zealously cheers his favourite team at the local kabaddi match.

Singh’s surprise claim to fame is that he is the first farmer to raise Tulsi crop commercially for Organic India (then IITC) in 1998 and the company till date holds him solely responsible for their success. The reason: Singh dared to do something out of the ordinary when organic farming (done without the use of chemicals and fertilisers) was unheard of. Growing three varieties of tulsi in their farmland was then totally unacceptable to farmers who were not even ready to do it for money. Those were the days when most farmers were struggling with low prices, low yields and even lower productivity.

“I had faith in them,” says Singh nonchalantly. Put the same question to Yoav Lev, President and Founder, Organic India, and he promptly says: “I was desperate for a beginning and when I looked into his (Singh’s) eyes and told him to trust me, he probably saw the desperation because he said yes.”

That act of faith was one of the few incidents that changed the direction of his life. Lev first came to India with his wife Holly in 1995 to meet his guru H.W.L. Poonja in Lucknow. The couple fell in love with the country and was rechristened Bharat Mitra and Bhavani Mitra by their guru. Along with a new name and a new country, the Israeli-American couple also got introduced to Ayurveda. The natural cures that were used in the Ayurveda treatments, especially from tulsi (Holy Basil), impressed them.

“Tulsi contains hundreds of beneficial compounds known as phytochemicals. Working together, these compounds possess strong antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, and immunity-enhancing properties that promote general health and support the body’s natural defense against stress and illness,” Lev elaborates.

Influenced by their guru, the couple decided to market tulsi products globally. “I went to 11 factories who were manufacturing Ayurveda products but none of them was doing a good job of it. Many companies still pretend to be organic and pure Ayurveda but you have to check for yourself before believing them,” Lev says. He then began the journey of cultivating tulsi the organic way by getting together hundreds of farmers. “I decided to set up my own manufacturing plant but was faced with the problem of raw material since, nowhere could I get organically-farmed tulsi on a large scale,” he says.

Lev had a tough time convincing the farmers, who were wary of the tall gora and balked at the idea of tulsi crop. “They thought I will run away like many others but I am a persistent man,” he quips. Initial hiccups notwithstanding, the duo managed to set up a company called the Indo-Israel Trading Corporation (IITC), which was rechristened Organic India last year. The company now employs more than 12,000 contract farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, cultivating tulsi on 50,000 acres of land.

The firm has a diverse product range comprising 15 premium quality Ayurvedic herbal formulations like Ashwagandha, Amalaki, Brahmi, Bowelcare, Breathe Free, Flexibility, Immunity, Herbal Antibiotic, Liver-Kidney Care, Sugar Balance, Triphala, Tulsi, Weight Balance, Women’s Well Being, along with five different blends of Tulsi Tea— Tulsi Original, Ginger, Green, and Tulsi Chai Masala. The company cultivates, collects, processes, manufactures and markets certified organic Tulsi teas, herbal supplements, Psyllium, Castor Oil, Ayurvedic and medicinal herbs, and many other organic foods and organic spices.

That’s not all. The Lucknowbased company with associate offices in the US and Israel recently launched 18 new organic flavours of tea which include Pomegranate Green, Chamomile, India Breakfast, Licorice Spice, Passionfruit, Red Chai, Sweet Lemon, Sweet Rose and Vanilla Crème, among others. These blends are being prepared using Rama, Krishna and Vana tulsi leaves which the company grows organically.

“We have invested close to Rs 50 crore till date in our operations and we expect to break even by April 2008,” Lev says while claiming that over the past few years a lot of Indian and foreign companies have offered to buy a stake in the company but Lev wants to keep the management strictly privately held.

For the past few years, the company has been test-marketing its complete range of health products in Lucknow and Delhi. It has also been supplying Ayurvedic herbs to select companies in the US, France, Japan, Germany, Korea, Israel, The Netherlands and Australia. The latest is an agreement with Germany’s Ulrich Walter GmbH to market Organic India Tulsi Tea products.

There are new markets on the horizon too. “While Tulsi tea is our biggest product till date, there is huge market for Psyllium in the United States and quite strangely in certain pockets of Japan, our Tulsi tea is preferred to their traditional tea,” he says.

The new markets spell better times for the farmers as well. Already, the 3-4 month organic crop cultivations have led to better margins for the farmers, so much so that even the third generation farmers plan to stay on and do farming instead of migrating to the cities.

Kailash Nath Singh says he now gets around Rs 3 lakh from the company for one crop. “I would like to do the crop more than once but they won’t let me,” he grumbles good-naturedly.

And apart from the money, organic farming has more in store for the farmers. “In the first year, the crop yielded 2.5 quintal per acre, but now the productivity of my land has increased to 20 quintal per acre,” says Kanta Singh, who at 85 is a bit hard of hearing but loves to talk about the good fortune that the company has brought to his family. “We get as much as Rs 40,000 from the tulsi crop per season while other crops fetch just around Rs 10,000,” he says.

Kanta Singh’s son Lochan Singh says it is because of this single crop that his sons have decided to stay in the village and not migrate to nearby cities for better future. “We believe we can earn more by growing more herbs for the company, so there’s no point getting out of the family business,” he says while his camera-shy son Rahul nods from a distance.

Organic India, for its part, is quick to acknowledge the efforts of these farmers. For the last five years, it has been organising an annual event called Tulsi Mahotsava at Azamgarh which felicitates farmers associated with them; the Levs go around the village inviting the farmers personally for the event. “Tulsi Mahotsava is the celebration in honour of the revered tulsi plant from which much of the work for the company stems. The whole community of farmers and Organic India employees come together, to share their gratitude and fruits of transformation through organic agriculture and the unique initiative they are part of,” says Lev. This year’s event at Azamgarh echoed the same with farmers from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh joining in.

For villagers though, the celebration does not end there. The organic tulsi has brought about a wave of social change as well. “We employ close to 1,200 socially outcast women as machine operators or for plucking in various villages and try to give livelihood to them as much as we can,” says Lev.

“I have been working for the company for the last nine years and I get as much as Rs 8,000 per season,” says a proud 60-year-old Dulari Devi. She is glad that she can be independent at this age too. For her and the others, that’s the real healing power of tulsi.