A delicious affair

After four-and-a-half hours of arduous trekking on the hill slopes from Srinagar town in early May last year, I reached the temperate forest of Khirsu, an eye- catching yet lesser known hill station in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal district.

Letters - April 15, 2012

Authority to fight hunger

Beyond stoned

Up for scrutiny

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has agreed to allow independent agencies to evaluate how well it is managing forests.

Paan loses flavour

The way paan is associated with India, a Chaurasia is associated with paan. But both the equations are changing, said Lalta Prasad Chaurasia, spitting blood red betel juice into an elegantly designed brass spittoon. The 58-year-old is among the last generation of Chaurasia farmers in Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh who have witnessed betel leaves yield a fortune. Both betel leaves and the Chaurasias are an integral part of Mahoba’s history. The district is known for its betel gardens and the Chaurasias are India’s exclusive community devoted to betel farming. But they are now finding it difficult to sustain the family occupation.

Super Market

• India has 16,000 recorded plant species. About 3,000 of these yield minor forest produce (MFP). • Nearly 500 million people living in and around forests in India depend on MFP for sustenance and as a supplement to their income

Bad Medicine

Gresham revisited Demand for herbal drugs has surged. Riding the crest of the wave are spurious and adulterated medicines

What's in a neem?

THE 10-year period from 1985 to April 25, 1995 - accordingto relevant dat'abases - has been marked by a veritable delugeof us and European patents on neem-related products. Thedatabases also include information on patents which werefiled through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PcT), a uN bodyfunctioning under the World Intellectual PropertyOrganization.

Ayurvedic cure for malaria

IT HAS been nearly four decades since the first case of drug-resistant malaria was spotted in the world. Since then scientists have been trying hard to develop medicines to counter its menace.

Gulp it down the cool way

Bite into anything in this richly forested taluk of Karnataka and be sure it would be organic. Chemical cultivation practices have not been introduced in Sirsi. What’s more, all the healthy traditional food practices of Malnad, disappearing fast elsewhere, are retained here in near-exact form.