Documented secret

Documented secret

Thrikkakkara in southeast Ernakulam district is like any other panchayat in Kerala witnessing a rapid transition from a village to a town. The panchayat houses the All India Radio broadcast station, the headquarters of the district administration and many commercial institutions. Yet the panchayat also comprises elders who are treasure houses of the fast-disappearing knowledge of natural biodiversity. These are people who can differentiate at least 24 varieties of rice, use more than 50 local plants as herbal medicine and cultivate 12 varieties of banana, seven varieties of tubers or eight varieties of mangoes. Such knowledge and those who hold such knowledge on the natural/cultivated species of plants and animals have now been brought to the public domain not only in the Thrikkakkara panchayat, but also in all the 86 panchayats in Ernakulam district through a massive, collective exercise called the People's Biodiversity Register Programme (PBRP).

This is not the first time that the People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) is being attempted or its perceived merits and dangers debated in the state. The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) had compiled a PBR of Puthur panchayat in Thrissur district in early 1990s. If these were pioneering efforts guided by a handful of spirited volunteers or activists, the preparation of 86 PBRs in Ernakulam district is the outcome of appropriating the concept of PBR within the decentralised planning process, the People' Plan Campaign, now underway in Kerala.

It goes to the credit of the Ernakulam district panchayat and a few social activists including M K Prasad of KSSP that the local body could take up the PBRP, despite the fact that the People's Plan Campaign had not officially recommended any specific programme for district level documentation of biodiversity in the Ninth Plan. The PBRP, launched in 1998, was, instead, supported and funded by the planning department. An elaborate network of working groups was created for the programme in all the three tiers of the panchayati raj structure -- district, block and gram panchayat -- and even further down to all the 885 wards in the district. The groups comprised resource persons from academic circles, elected representatives, students, teachers, social activists and many volunteers.

Information was gathered from elders and other knowledgeable persons of each ward through informal interviews as well as group discussions, wherein the local availability or uses of many species were thrown open for debate. "Field studies were conducted subsequently to verify several claims and clarify doubts," explained Krishnaprasad, a botany teacher at the Maharajah's College and the principal investigator of PBRP. "The whole process went on for nearly 18 months, much longer than expected."

The secondary data on plant and animal species economically or otherwise valuable to the people collected in the process cover 23 broad heads which include grains, oilseeds, cash crops, tubers, vegetables, pulses, fruits, medicinal plants, domesticated animals, birds, insects and weeds. Each PBR also contains information on traditional occupational groups in the panchayat and on people who are sources of traditional/folk knowledge in general and traditional medicine in particular.

The data collected through the exercise point to the richness as well as the threatened nature of biodiversity in the district. For instance, 66 varieties of rice are known to have been cultivated in the district as a until recently, but only a handful of them are currently in use. The Thrikkakkara panchayat , where only six varieties are now in use out of 24 known to panchayat elders, is perhaps an extreme case. Over 170 species of medicinal plants have been listed in the whole district and 50 in Thrikkakkara. Of the latter, 23 plants are already in short supply and another 11 have become extremely rare. "There are several panchayats which do not have a single bull but have a number of elephants," points out Krishnaprasad, hinting at how modern practices have decimated several species and also transformed our understanding of 'value'.

Apart from providing a record of local knowledge on plant and animal species, the PBRs could serve "as the preliminary basis for recognition of local knowledge systems and their revitalisation," hopes M K Prasad. "It could also alert conservationists and lead them to action for protection of resources as well as local rights over resources. Whether the PBRs could be used as instruments to protect local biodiversity and knowledge from being privatised and patented by commercial interests is being examined by the Union ministry of environment and forests," he says.

Even though it is expected that the preparation of PBRs would lead to local level action plans for conservation of depleting resources, so far there is no sign of this enormous task being taken up by the local self government institutions. After the elaborate exercise in Ernakulam district, the understanding was that each gram panchayat would pass a resolution to the effect that the species listed in the PBR are the assets of the local body and that any commercial use of the information would entail payment of royalties and fees. But this has not happened. The municipalities and the district corporation have not carried out PBRP in their respective areas. The Ernakulam district panchayat itself has not thought of any follow-up action aimed at conservation. Even the state planners have not incorporated the PBR programme in the Fifth Year's Plan. Though the State Biodiversity Committee had written to all the 1,000-odd panchayats in the state offering free training on PBRP, the response so far has been lukewarm, points out Prasad. However, three more districts in the state have planned to carry out a repeat of the Ernakulam exercise in the current year.

surendranath c ernakulam district (kerala) 12jav.net12jav.net