In the forest-rich heartland of Betul district, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr. Mohan Yadav put more than ₹30 crore directly into the bank accounts of 3.69 lakh tendu leaf collectors on Saturday, 31 October 2026 — a transfer that reaches deep into the tribal households that harvest one of central India's most valuable minor forest products.

Standing alongside Union Minister of State Dudhi Narain Uikey and Madhya Pradesh BJP State President Hitanand Khandelwal, the Chief Minister oversaw the direct benefit transfer at an event in Betul. In the same ceremony, village forest committees of the Betul forest division received an additional ₹13 crore-plus as kaashth laabhaansh — timber dividend — credited straight to the accounts of Gram Van Samiti members.

Tendu leaf and Madhya Pradesh's decades-old promise to forest collectors

Madhya Pradesh nationalised the tendu leaf trade in the 1970s, creating a government-managed system that pools sale proceeds and returns a share to the collectors who pluck the leaves every summer. The state is India's largest tendu leaf producer, and the collectors — overwhelmingly from Scheduled Tribe communities — depend on these seasonal earnings as critical supplementary income for forest-dependent households.

Direct benefit transfers of tendu bonuses and forest produce dividends have been state practice since at least the early 2010s, cutting out middlemen and ensuring the surplus reaches collectors' accounts directly. The framework dovetails with the national Forest Rights Act, 2006, which enshrines community rights over forest resources and their produce.

Gram Van Samitis and the timber dividend

The ₹13 crore timber dividend credited to Betul's village forest committees represents a separate stream of the same underlying philosophy: communities that steward local forests should share in the commercial value those forests generate. Gram Van Samitis manage day-to-day forest resource decisions at the village level, and their annual dividend is both a financial reward and an incentive to protect the tree cover.

The presence of a Union Minister of State and the state BJP president at the Betul event signals the political weight both the state government and the central leadership attach to these welfare transfers — especially ahead of similar disbursement events expected across other Madhya Pradesh districts.

For nearly four lakh families who bend over tendu bushes each May and June, this October credit is the delayed pay-off — and the clearest measure of whether the promise made in the forest canopy ever reaches the kitchen.