Subject: -- "Making Science of Mumbo-Jumbo" -- relates to efforts to compile
ethnic and traditional knowledge.


Down to Earth -  
Published by Centre for Science and Environment
http://www.oneworld.org/cse/html/dte/ 

How To Sell A Wonder Herb

There is arogyapacha. A rare herb with extraordinary medicinal
properties. There is the Kani tribe of Kerala. It has preserved 
the herb and the knowledge about its use. Enter scientists and the state
government. They try to sell the herb and share the benefits with the
Kanis in the first experiment of its kind in the world. The project
flounders. And how. Max Martin analyses a failure snatched from the jaws
of success

The miracle-makers
Scientists are only now finding out the Kanis' knowledge of herbal
remedies. The most outstanding find so far is arogyapacha

SMELL of burning bamboo. The short and wiry figure of Ayyappan Kani. The
elderly man is busy mixing herbs with a strange extraction from a piece
of burnt bamboo. With a beatific smile, he explains that it will treat a
boil on a little girl's belly. The place is Chonanpara, a Kani tribal
settlement in a reserved forest of Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram 
district. Ayyappan Kani is a practitioner of malamarunnu, the medicine
of the mountain, given to the Kani tribe by the mythical sage Agastya.

About 40 km away in Njaranili village, townsfolk come to consult Eswaran
Kani, a traditional tribal healer. The pious medic explains that people
gave him the nickname 'Eswaran' (meaning god) after he successfully
treated some patients sent back by the Medical College Hospital,
Thiruvananthapuram.

The Kanis, numbering about 16,000, live in the lush tropical forests of
the Western Ghats. According to Kani myths, their ancestors were
exceptionally adept at shooting arrows. The ancient sage Agastya
disarmed a Kani couple to prevent the birth of a martial race in his
abode of peace and meditation. Instead, the couple were given a scroll
on herbal remedies. And a boon to cure the sick with their chants. Kanis
are now known for their sure-fire antidotes. The tribal knowledge of
forest plants holds the key to several new discoveries and wonder drugs,
a multi-billion-dollar business worldwide.

The Kani tribe's contribution from that treasure trove is arogyapacha
(Trichopus zeylanicus), a herb with tonic qualities. In Malayalam
arogyapacha means 'health green'. Indeed. Its business potential is
comparable to ginseng of Korea, says P Pushpangadan, director, Tropical
Botanical Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI), Thiruvananthapuram.
Trained in Ayurveda and botanical research, Pushpangadan is a pushy
seller of ideas. "In South Korea, a large share of the foreign exchange
is earned from ginseng," he notes. With its anti-fatigue properties,
arogyapacha is a potential global hit, he says. Arogyapacha is the
quintessential wonder herb. It possibly has immune-enhancing and
liver-protecting qualities, claim scientists of TBGRI.

THE DISCOVERY AND THE DEAL
Pushpangadan says he first came across the wonder herb in 1987, before
the birth of TBGRI. During an arduous trek through the forests near the
Agastya hills in Thiruvananthapuram, Pushpangadan and his colleague S
Rajasekharan got a sudden "flush of energy and strength" after eating
the seeds of arogyapacha given to them by two Kani guides.

After isolating the herb's rejuvenating properties, TBGRI scientists
developed a traditional drug formula containing 15 per cent arogyapacha.
They scientifically tested its toxicity and efficacy. "It took eight
years of research," says S Rajasekharan, now an ethnobotanist at TBGRI
(ethnobotany is the study of traditional knowledge and custom of 
a people relating to plants). "Starving rats ran around after consuming
arogyapacha," narrates Ayyappan Kani about the tests.

In November 1995, TBGRI sold the formula to Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP)
of Coimbatore for a licence fee of Rs 10 lakh to produce the drug for
seven years. The licence fee and the 2 per cent royalty on the profits
from the formulation was to be shared equally by TBGRI and the Kani
tribe.

Sharing of benefits with Kanis was a promise that TBGRI had made much
before it became the catch phrase in biodiversity conservation. "Right
in 1987, the scientists had promised the Kani tribals due share from any
profit arising from research based on the plants we showed them," says
Kuttimathan Kani, who was one of the guides who introduced Pushpangadan
to the herb. "After a few years of silence, suddenly the two scientists
came to visit us two years ago," he notes. They offered a share to the
tribals. "It is the first experiment of benefit-sharing with a local
community in India, and perhaps the world," says Pushpangadan. He wants
it to be a model.

The herb clicked in the market. There was instant demand for the
arogyapacha-based formulation called Jeevani, which was sold at the rate
of Rs 160 for a 75-gram jar. There are orders worth a fortune pending
from Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, says an AVP
spokesperson. TBGRI is now in the process of developing another drug 
from the same plant: a non-steroid sports medicine. "We do not have long
distance runners in Kerala. We lack endurance," says Pushpangadan. He
notes that another arogyapacha formulation is being tested in sports
schools of the state as an endurance-enhancing drug.

Now, there is a huge demand for the raw material. For full potency, the
wonder herb has be to cultivated in its natural habitat, that is shady
and wet tropical forests. Kuttimathan says that the pharmacy has offered
the tribals a neat Rs 100 per kilogram of arogyapacha leaves. The
tribals have started growing it in their backyard of their 
forest settlements under a government scheme. Says Madhavan Kani in
Chonanpara: "We would pick up saplings from the forest and they grow
well here."

If only it was this simple, we would have brought you a success story.
But the state forest department had different ideas. 

The red tape vs Kanis

When Kanis took arogyapacha leaves out of their settlements for sale,
they were stopped at the forest check-post. At the state forest head
office, Premachandran, chief conservator of forest (CCF), explains the
technicality: "Arogyapacha is not included in the list of minor forest
produce." Only minor forest produce is allowed out of the forest. 
Forest officials confiscate any consignment of arogyapacha going out of
the forest. M S Joy, warden of ABP, and a forest guard on duty assure
that they would not allow any of the wonder herb to go out.

Arogyapacha is a "rare plant" and is contraband in the free market,
points out T M Manoharan, CCF (vigilance). On TBGRI's part, Rajasekharan
argues that though initial studies suggested that arogyapacha was rare,
subsequent studies showed that it was also found at other places in the
region, including Tamil Nadu. He says cultivating and collecting the
plant in the forest will not wipe it out. This raises a question: what
is the forest department trying to protect except for its control over
the poor tribe's limited means of generating an income? Pushpangadan
maintains that TBGRI has written to the forest department to allow Kanis
the right to cultivate and sell the herb.

In 1995, the government's Integrated Tribal Development Project in
Nedumangad initiated a scheme in collaboration with TBGRI to help the
Kanis grow medicinal plants in their settlements. Under the project, 50
select families received Rs 1,000 each. Reportedly, 20.25 hectares were
under cultivation. "Many people successfully cultivated 
arogyapacha," notes Rajasekharan. TBGRI bought the leaves from the
Kanis, paying Rs 30 per kg for chemical trial and for pilot production.

During the second harvest, some people uprooted the whole plant from
their gardens and some others took the wild herb from the forest,
according to TBGRI officials. This alerted the forest department against
possible large-scale 'smuggling' of the herb. When Kanis tried to sell
the herb, they were caught. In a widely reported operation in 1996, 
Manoharan confiscated 10,500 arogyapacha plants from a private nursery
at Vithura village in Thiruvananthapuram. "We are trying to prevent
destructive use of the plant," Manoharan explains.

The CCF's next argument is that it is mostly non-tribals or tribals
acting on behalf of non-tribals who smuggle the plant. The forest
department is not convinced that Kanis will benefit from the sale of
arogyapacha. They believe that the sale will benefit private interests
and not the tribal community. "It is a way of exploiting the tribals by
certain lobbies. They would ask Kanis to collect the plant and give them
a little money or alcohol in return," says Kerala's forest minister P R
Kurup. Such concern for the tribal people on the part of the forest
department is laudable. However, imposing a blanket ban on taking
arogyapacha out of the forest does not help anybody. Least of all the 
Kanis.

Manoharan says Kanis got little in return for whatever material they
supplied. "If any pharmacy has collected arogyapacha, they have done it
illegally," says Manoharan. G Gangadharan, general manager (product
development) of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, counters the allegation: "Our
initial lot of 22,000 to 25,000 bottles were made from raw material made
available by TBGRI, as per an agreement. There has been no production
for the last one year."

It is improper for a government department to make changes in the law to
aid a private company, notes Manoharan. "TBGRI could have sold the
technology to Oushadhi, the state government's own drug company," he
notes. Rajasekharan says that the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR) allows technology transfer to anyone who offers the
biggest return. "There is a demand for the plant. If the Kanis cannot
sell it, somebody else will. They will be the losers," he sums up.

Manoharan suggests artificial regeneration technique for the plant.
TBGRI and a cooperative can help the Kanis cultivate the plant, he
recommends, adding that they should seek permission for it in "due
process". "What is the big hurry?" he asks. Yet he insists that the
department's only interest is in ensuring that the Kanis are benefited.

Kanis are puzzled. "We are asked to grow medicinal plants but we cannot
sell them," says Kuttimathan. He picked holes in the forest law while
addressing the media at the first press conference staged by a Kani
group at the press club of Thiruvananthapuram on June 11, 1998. In quite
an articulate manner, he argued that the government should reward Kanis
for conserving rare plants and developing special knowledge about them.
He threatened to bring Kani families to the state secretariat for a
sit-in strike. His immediate demand: allow Kanis to grow, sell and make
profit from arogyapacha.

"The sale of the leaves would have given us a steady income," says
Kuttimathan. The money meant for tribal development never reaches the
Kanis, he points out.

The representatives of the tribe have launched the Kani Community
Welfare Trust in November 1997, and started a bank account. Kuttimathan,
secretary of the trust, notes that it has representation of 40 tribal
settlements. But TBGRI, an autonomous institution under the state
government, is yet to get permission to transfer the money to the 
account. The Kanis' share of the money from the TBGRI deal is yet to be
given.

<>

 The benefit sharing scheme for arogyapacha saw hurdles right from the
start. On July 22, 1995, the then chief minister of Kerala, A K Antony,
was to sign a memorandum of understanding with Arya Vaidya Pharmacy
(AVP), marking the technology transfer from the Tropical Botanical
Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI). It was deferred at the last
minute following intervention from the opposition led by the Communist
Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

 The then leader of the opposition V S Achuthanandan argued that the
licence fee was too little considering the huge international market
potential of the formulation. Calling the agreement a "sell-out", he
suggested that the licence fee could have run into crores of rupees.

 The Marxist leader made a case for state government-run pharmaceutical
companies, such as the Kerala State Drugs and Pharmaceuticals. He
contended that the government could have considered transferring the
technology to a public sector undertaking outside the state. If none of
these was feasible, the government should negotiate with other private
drug companies for a bigger share as royalty, argued the leader of the
opposition.

 P Pushpangadan, director, TBGRI, points out that the licence fee of Rs
10 lakh was adequate as AVP was taking the risk of buying a product
untested in the market. It is a promotional drug, he points out, adding
that a 2 per cent royalty is an internationally acceptable norm. "One to
four per cent royalty is accepted worldwide," he notes.

 Pushpangadan cites the example of a regional research laboratory of the
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research which transferred the
technology of an Ayurvedic drug in the 1980s for less than Rs 2 lakh.

 Later, the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, sold the
technology of a memory drug based on brahmi (Baccopa monnieri) for Rs 10
lakh. "It was a one-time transfer, though ours is not a complete
transfer," says Pushpangadan. He argues that the seven-year term given
to the private firm would help establish the credentials of the drug,
and its licence can be sold later for higher profits. "It is the highest
licence fee (paid for a drug based on traditional know-how) in India," 
Pushpangadan declares.

 According to norms set by the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, the scientists who develop a formula are legible for 40 per
cent of the licence fee. "But we did not claim anything," notes S
Rajasekharan of TBGRI. An initial plan to give the scientists one-fourth
of the licensing fee was dropped.

 Moreover, once the CPI-M-led coalition came to power, it did not take
any initiative. Nor did it try to make the state government's
pharmaceutical company come up with an alternate plan of benefit
sharing. The state government had a clear choice: either make the public
sector capable of commercially utilising such knowledge or the let the
private sector do so. Achutanandan's advocacy of favouring state-owned
agencies does not hold water. These agencies are not the market leaders, 
nor did they make an effort to buy tribal medicinal know-how.

<>


Kani vs Kani

The most bitter conflict of them all is between groups of Kanis
themselves. Kanis have had to take sides in a battle fought on their
part by two competing government agencies: TBGRI and the Kerala
Institute for Research, Training and Development of Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes (KIRTADS). Supported by KIRTADS, many Kani elders
believe that their traditional knowledge is sacred and should remain
exclusive.

"It (traditional knowledge) should not be sold. But what to do? We are
hungry," says Mallan Kani, a healer and practitioner of the tribal chant
in Mangode settlement. Eswaran Kani, who has been formally trained by
KIRTADS, puts it simply: "The Kanis have sold their secret because of
their poverty; Rs 5 lakh (the Kanis' share of the licence money) is a
pittance, considering the huge profits that can be made from it." He
hints that the very name "arogyapacha" is an outcome of TBGRI's
intervention. Kuttimathan has a different view. He says the younger
generation of Kanis rechristened the wonder herb.

Tribal healers such as Eswaran are sticklers of a code of conduct that
emphasises the purity of the practitioner. In September 1995, a group of
nine Kani healers wrote a letter to the chief minister opposing the sale
of their knowledge to a private firm. Eswaran visited Chonanpara to
dissuade the Kanis from entering into the deal with TBGRI and 
selling arogyapacha. "He went back a bit annoyed with us," says
Kuttimathan. "If a healer has the knowledge, then as an individual he
can gain. What is the use to the community?" he asks.

Some of the tribal healers are highly successful. Achappan Vaidyar is
not a Kani. But the healer from Wayanad in northern Kerala has made a
fortune. KIRTADS has initiated a three-year training programme for
tribal healers under Achappan's guidance. He is a celebrity in Wayanad,
where tribal people live in penury.

"We are now documenting the tribal medical knowledge and details of the
medicinal plants that the tribals use," says Vishwanathan Nair,
director, KIRTADS. A PhD in tribal medicine, Nair says he refused to
publish his thesis as he first wanted to know what the tribals have got.
He also fears that any private firm might grab the tribal knowledge to
make profits once the information is out as a book. There is no law to
share benefits with tribals, he indicates. Nair's fear means that tribal
knowledge will remain canned till a 'brave new world' dawns and the
system sheds the red tape. High hopes.

Bureaucracy still haunts him. CSIR's Regional Research Laboratory (RRL)
in Thiruvananthapuram, in collaboration with KIRTADS, had identified
some effective herbal formulations based on tribal knowledge. "The
results were exciting," says Vishwanathan Nair. RRL scientists note that
one of them, an anti-diabetic formulation, proved to be more potent than
a popular allopathic drug. But work on this front was discontinued at
RRL following the transfer of a scientist working on it. There is also a
fund crunch. "We have discontinued research as we do not have adequate
humanpower," says Vijayan Nair, director, RRL. So much so for
governmental drug development.

Yet, KIRTADS' former partners have differences with TBGRI's
unconventional, market-friendly style. "Please do not involve us in it.
We have nothing to do with pseudo-science," said A D Damodaran, former
RRL director and well-known scientist in Kerala, commenting on the
arogyapacha-based drug. In a telephonic interview, he refused to compare
or link RRL's work on tribal medicine with that of TBGRI.

KIRTADS and TBGRI had unproductive interfaces through the 1990s. True to
form, both the institutes turned down offers from each other to work
alongside. Vishwanathan Nair says that in 1996 at a high-level meeting,
KIRTADS' help was sought to organise Kanis and cultivate arogyapacha for
commercial drug production. According to reports, the idea was to
involve 1,000 families for cultivation in 2,025 hectares in tribal
holdings. "They wanted pubic (forest) land, and the adivasis' labour to
make profit for a private company which has a monopoly," says
Vishwanathan Nair. He refused. "I said I would not do a contractor's
job."

In July 1995, TBGRI scientists accused KIRTADS of trying to torpedo the
arogyapacha project. "It is a clash of petty egos," alleges a TBGRI
scientist. The Kanis do not have a role. While KIRTADS director Nair
insists that the tribal medical knowledge should not be diluted by crass
commercialisation, TBGRI scientists accuse KIRTADS of a "totally
unscientific" practice of promoting tribal healers. TBGRI and KIRTADS:
the twain shall never meet.

It is a power game which excludes Kanis. In 1995, KIRTADS had sought
from the government the power to screen all who approach Kerala's tribal
healers. It was not given. An innovative, state-level bill has been
drafted with KIRTADS's help by K Abdul Latheef, former faculty member of
National Law School of India and joint coordinator of Kerala Environment
and Human Rights Research Centre, Kozhikode. It gives exclusive rights
to tribal communities over their intellectual property. KIRTADS has been 
pushing this draft since 1995. But the legislators are not interested.

The well-intentioned draft envisages that a tribal intellectual property
rights (IPRs) council with judicial powers will oversee actions to
prevent 'exploitation' and 'misuse' of tribal IPRs. Provided the bill
becomes law, an infringement of tribal IPRs could lead to four years'
imprisonment and a fine of Rs 500,000. Experts, however, note that the 
tribal IPR law may not work at the state level. "Constitutionally, it is
under the jurisdiction of the centre," says BK Roy Burman, an expert on
tribal IPR issues and a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies, Delhi.

The story of arogyapacha is that of a bold experiment faltering due to
unrelenting bureaucracy and a policy vacuum. "The irony of the situation
is that TBGRI, the Forest Department and KIRTADS are all part of the
same state government, among whom there is no coordination or even a
mechanism for dialogue," notes R V Anuradha, a New Delhi-based lawyer
who submitted a case-study of this benefit sharing system to the CBD
secretariat. The story of arogyapacha also illustrates how various
government institutions try to push their own agenda in the name of an
ethnic community.

India's tribal communities have a veritable gold-mine in their
traditional knowledge. But the governments do not have a clue about its
proper use. Bureaucrats will wait till kingdom comes before they let
innovations based on tribal knowledge open for public good. If the
knowledge is lost by the tribal communities, its fate is sealed in 
government files.

That the ancient sage Agastya disarmed Kanis and gave them medicinal
knowledge is myth. But that the bureaucracy will not let them benefit
from this knowledge is reality.

Copyright - Centre for Science and Environment


<<>>
Down to Earth
Published by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)
http://www.oneworld.org/cse/html/dte/

Making science of mumbo-jumbo

Scientists compile India's ethnic knowledge. They find a veritable
gold-mine


P R J PRADEEP  Thiruvananthapuram

IT COULD well be one of the most exhaustive scientific pursuits
undertaken in post-independence India. The All India Coordinated
Research Project on Ethnobiology (AICRPE) has unearthed a large spectrum
of uses that tribal populations of the country make of plants and
animals.

Home to some of the world's most diverse ecosystems, India has a similar
diversity of ethnic groups, characterised by its tribal populations.
Bypassed by the march of modern civilisation, some tribal communities
still live in rock crevices — in the hunter-gatherer stage of human
evolution — while others fall in stages further down the evolution 
path. Termed 'primitive', these communities have long been neglected by
the modern age. But after perpetuating severe deforestation and
ecosystem damage, modern civilisation is revising its attitude. The
linear notion of history and evolution is being questioned. Primitive,
for once, is understood differently. Tribal knowledge and ways of 
life are serious subjects of analysis now.

With India's tribal communities assimilating into mainstream society,
their knowledge and practices needed to be documented. In 1976, M S
Swaminathan, the then director general of the Indian Council of
Agricultural Research, initiated consultations to this effect. A working
group under T N Khoshoo, now a research fellow at the Tata Energy 
Research Institute, drafted a proposal. Consequently, AICRPE was
launched in 1982 under the Man and Biosphere programme of the United
Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) by the
department of science and technology.

AICRPE was transferred to the department of environment when it was
created, and later to the ministry of environment and forests (MEF). P
Pushpangadan, then at the Regional Research Laboratory of the Council of
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at Jammu, was posted chief
coordinator in 1983. AICRPE was to be multi-disciplinary,
multi-institutional and action-oriented. The research project took stock
of India's tribal panorama.

The project involved as many as 27 institutions from across the country,
including the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), the Zoological Survey of
India (ZSI), the Central Drugs Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, and
the Birbal Sahni Institute, Lucknow. More than 400 investigators took
part, representing diverse fields such as anthropology, sociology,
modern medicine, Ayurveda, botany, zoology, pharmacology and chemistry.
After more than 16 years of untiring effort, the exercise concluded in
March 1998.

According to the 1991 census, there are 67.8 million tribals in the
country. They come from 550 communities and 227 ethnic groups living in
more than 5,000 forested villages or in forests. The task was Herculean.
The places were mostly inaccessible and the communities spoke 116
different dialects, apart from the known languages. The effort was of
seminal importance as the tribal knowledge systems are in the form of
oral traditions and are disappearing fast.

The comprehensive database was kept confidential during the project in
light of the increasing interest in ethnobiology for commercial uses. It
is now available with the MEF for planners to be used for pragmatic
development models for the tribals and the country in the first place.
It also highlights areas where immediate conservation inputs and 
studies are needed.

Ethnobotany: what plants mean
Over 10,000 wild plants used by tribals for varied uses have been
recorded. Of these, 8,000 are used for medicinal purposes, with 2,000
new claims warranting scientific scrutiny. As many as 4,000 plant
species are used by the tribals for food, with 800 new findings of
edible use.

"That means alternate food sources for the future," Pushpangadan told
Down To Earth. "The number of edible species are shrinking through time.
People used thousands of plants earlier. This has now reduced to a
handful, the majority depending on just four species, namely rice,
wheat, maize and potato, which are called staple food," he added. 
This can affect human health as the body needs many specific ingredients
according to the ecosystem. Many of the above-mentioned edible species
can be restored and many others can be used commercially. These options
can give incomes to tribals without damaging the ecosystem.

The tribal populations also use plants for fibre and cord, for fodder
and for pesticidal and pisticidal uses. Uses for dyes, resins, perfumes
and incense are also wide-spread. With the demand for natural products
rising, proper planning can bring rich dividends, said Pushpangadan. The
AICRPE team also took stock of the endangered plant species and 
the reason for their being so. Over-exploitation by tribal people is
affecting several plants in the Western Himalaya, the Western Ghats and
Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The study team also found primitive cultivars and wild relative of crop
plants being cultivated by tribals in exclusion from the outside world.
About 250 such rare cultivars were deposited with the National Bureau of
Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), New Delhi. Precious gene pools and
germplasms of some of these are preserved in various AICRPE centres.
Archeo-botanical investigations as part of the AICRPE were undertaken by
the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany, which threw up important
findings about the uses of plants in ancient days.

Ethnozoology: animal medicine
Studying the tribals' use of animals is ethnozoology. The first attempt
of its kind in the country, it was carried out for AICRPE mainly by ZSI.
The project found that more than 100 animals are used for food.
Over-hunting is remains a problem as many of these are threatened.
Non-tribals also use tribals to hunt the animals. However, with 
adequate conservation inputs and captive breeding, many of medicinal
uses of animals can be continued without causing any significant harm to
their populations.

AICRPE found that 76 animals are used for medicinal purposes. Body
parts, such as blood, skin and skeleton, and products such as milk,
urine and faeces all have medicinal uses. More than 25 animal products
have been short-listed for scientific investigation. The hen's egg had
maximum number of uses - 36 applications in various tribal 
communities. Peacock is another bird with several utilities.

Understanding the mystic
Though there can be differences of opinion, the AICRPE exercise tries to
enable the modern world to accept and understand the mystic world of
tribals through the medium of modern science. Where a number of "deities
and spirits nestle in the old trees and rivers, hills and streams", as
the AICRPE report notes. It is a world where one is answerable to the
omnipresent and the omnipotent. For most of the tribes the forests are
sacred and harm done is punishable.

The tribal healer is also the medium through which they know what is
happening. Different tribes use their own theories, like the concept of
tijio among the Santhals of central India, which is similar to the
modern day concept of 'bacteria'. Among the Kanis of Kerala, the concept
of visham explains cause of disease and it they are expelled by steam 
with medication.

Despite a rich cultural kaleidoscope the plight of tribals in most areas
is poor, except in places where forests are still healthy, notes the
report. Malnutrition is rampant. Proselytisation to Hinduism and
Christianity are also threatening the customs and practises of the
tribals, apart from modernisation. Christianisation is severely damaging
as the tribal culture is grounded in faith in several gods, which
Christianity negates. Their message is that homogenisation is the only
means to livelihood security.

The massive database built up ought to help the tribals earn a living
and retain the positive attributes of their life. This possibility of
that is proved — though not totally — in the case of the herb
arogyapacha and the Kani tribals of Kerala. A series of such steps will
change the face of tribal India.


Copyright - CSE Centre for Science and Environment