Madurai and beyond

Once the trap is set, the tribal people can only go deeper into the forests to repay their loans and fill the coffers of agents, traders and forest officials

Three hours from Madurai is Shenbaha Thopu. Rich in forest wealth, the peripheries of the forests are inhabited by 24 families of the Pallyan community who have traditionally been involved in the collection of non-timber forest produce (NTFP). Now something else has become a part and parcel of their lives: exploitation of their herb-gathering knowledge by a monopolistic agent, Selvam, and the local forest officials. Some 197 species of medicinal plants are smuggled out of the forests. The tribal people set out to the forests, which has a ‘protected area’ status. They trek 20 hours at a stretch for four to five days on an average, sometimes to altitudes up to 900 metres. Their expenses for food, liquor and batteries for radios, which is their only link to the world outside, amount to Rs 500 per week per family. The fortune they bring back is submitted to only one person — Selvam — for a measly Rs 350- 400 per family. In other words, the families are short of Rs 100-150 when they embark on their next trek. It is here that Selvam sets his trap. He offers a loan, which can be paid with the next week’s collection. The vicious circle is set; loans keep mounting and the pressure to collect more, too. All this while, the tribal people remain oblivious to Selvam’s trap. “He never rejects a loan request and we usually repay it through the sale of medicinal plants,” says a member of the Pallyan community, with utmost regard for the agent. Species like Gymnema sylvestre (gur mar), which is threatened in the wild, are sold for Rs 10 a kilogramme (kg), while Selvam sells them in the market for 40 a kg. But going to the other traders is a strict no. Fencing in In another village, a two-hour drive away from Shenbaha Thopu is Thaniparai in Rajapalyam, which has 1,600 hectares (ha) of protected forest area. The forest ranger is conspicuous by his absence for months at a stretch and his office is the “guard’s residence”. The situation here is no different from that in Shenbaha Thopu. Sundaram is the master here. Though he appears no different from the tribal people in appearance, the power he wields distinguishes him. The law and the forest officials, he gives a hoot. “What laws? There are no laws here,” he says. He has a warehouse where he stores medicinal plants. “This helps me control the flow of herbs to the market and hence regulate the prices,” he says haughtily. Does this mean that the gatherers are exploited? No, he insists. He pays them a quarter of the profits he makes after selling the plants to the traders. However, a small Down To Earth survey reveals that the tribal people get a paltry one-tenth of what Sundaram actually gets from the traders. Currently, there are three divisions of the forest community. The first one comprises two families whose members were given the job of forest guards when they were asked to shift out of the forest area when it was declared protected. They now inhabit the extreme periphery of the forest area. The second group comprises families who have been promised the same. They inhabit the immediate fringe of the forest area. The third group comprises of those who are yet to be offered anything, hence they continue to live within the forest area. Despite their differences, they have one thing in common: they swear allegiance to Sundaram. Though there is an oral agreement between the forest department (FD) and the Society for Tribal Development (STD), a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), to allow collection of 10 species of plants from the forests, the local people collect as much as 20 times more than the agreed number. STD has been unable to break Sundaram’s stranglehold and explain to the local people about the exploitation of the forests and themselves. Sundaram’s modus operandi is similar to Selvam’s. He too lends people money “whenever they need” and they repay by selling their collection. “There are families that still owe me Rs 2,000,” he says. To pay back the loans and the interest, too, the gatherers keep going deeper into the forests. There is no way out for the gatherers. They do not have direct access to traders. Confides Vanraj, a member of the Thaniparai’s Pallyan community: “When I tried to sell a fraction of my collection directly to a trader, Sundaram’s men and the forest officials threatened to harm me physically.” “Once we feel we have collected Rs 600-700 worth plants, we return. But Sundaram never pays us more than Rs 350,” says one of them. But Sundaram justifies the price he offers because herb traders pay him on the basis of dry weight, while the gatherers get value for the fresh weight and the herb and plant quality is much below that demanded by traders. The reality is quite different. A survey conducted in 1997 points out the difference between what the herb gatherers get and the processed material’s worth. Take Solanum xanthocarpum (kateli), for instance. One kg of the plant fetches the gatherer Rs 1.5, the wholesaler Rs 7 and the exporter Rs 15. The price of the final product that is derived from one kg of the material is worth Rs 1,200 (see table: Money matters). The collection from Thaniparai, Shenbaha Thopu and forest areas surrounding Madurai finally finds its way to the Virudhnagar and Madurai markets. And then to destinations outside the country, too, through the Tuticorn port, which unlike Cochin is not considered a major port handling export of medicinal plants. “Medicinal plant traders and researchers around Madurai are unable to comprehend the fact that Tuticorn does not have the recognition as is available to Cochin port which handles more of spices than medicinal plants,” says W Thomas, professor, American College, Madurai. According to an estimate, during 1997-98, almost 188 varieties of raw drugs derived from 169 medicinal plants were traded in the Madurai market alone. An annual figure of about 250 metric tonnes of dry material is traded annually. Some 10,000 herb gatherers rummage the rich forest areas of Madurai bringing booty for 10-odd traders who dominate the market in Madurai.

Herbal heist Hand-in-glove with the forest department, traders of medicinal plants and herbs make hay while communities who depend on herb gathering for survival scrounge for a living

IT IS a common sight near every forest area to see loaded trucks making their way through the dark cover of the night. The first thought that crosses one’s mind is that they are weighed down with timber. Wrong. Many times, what is being carried out is the herbal treasure of the forests. Everyday, tonnes of material worth millions of rupees are smuggled from the forests to markets within and outside the country. As agents and traders — through exploitation of local people — strip the forests of their wealth, the FD expresses helplessness. Meantime, the list of threatened species keeps increasing. To say the least, trade in medicinal plants is a ‘free-for-all’ zone. “I can collect whatever I want and in whatever quantities I think feasible,” asserts an agent, who refuses to be named. The forest officials can be bought off easily, allege the same traders. Meanwhile, the local people, mostly tribal, who are dependent on the forests for sustenance, have no other option but to abet illegal trade. In most cases, herb gatherers venture into the forests to collect plants demanded by the agents (who are also money lenders). They submit their collections to him for a paltry sum (and also borrow from him to tide over their needs). The agent then sells to traders who sell it further. The forest officials are, needless to say, hand-in-glove with the traders. The major markets for these products include Bara Bazar in Kolkata, Khari Baoli in Delhi, Avenue Road in Bangalore and G B N Street in Chennai. Says one trader in Madurai: “I sell about a tonne of Saussurea costus (kuth) in the peak season.” This species features in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) and the Negative List of exports issued by the Union ministry of commerce. In other words, export is prohibited. But domestic trade at such sizeable quantities and export are doing nothing to improve its ‘critically endangered’ status. It is only pushing it to the last possibly category: extinction.

Legal loopholes

CITES, which was ratified in 1982 by over 150 countries that includes India, regulates international trade in species threatened with extinction. The three appendices to CITES list the species for which these regulations currently apply. At present, 11 Indian medicinal plants are included in the appendices, wherein only one namely S costus, which is synonymous with S lappa in trade, is included in Appendix I (see table: Threat status). For species that feature in Appendix II of the CITES list, a certificate of cultivation is required for export. But that is easily available either by greasing the palms of the officials concerned or by forging documents. Traders confide that most pharmaceutical firms buy from them, but there are no bills involved. The plants are used in their products to maintain the efficacy but the names are not printed in the constituent list of the product. Export and import of medicinal plants in India are regulated by the Exim (Export-Import) Policy of the government of India and CITIES. A regulation under the Exim policy is the Negative List of exports of 56 plant species issued by the ministry of commerce in 1992. This was reduced to 29 in 1998. Traders, however, allege that even the shortened list does not portray a true picture and have been lobbying for the removal of some species from the list. Says D B A Narayana of the Dabur Research Foundation, Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh, “There should be a period after which the plants should be removed from the list.” The recent order by the Union ministry of environment and forests has only made matters easy for the traders. Barring a mere 114 species, the government has freed export of all medicinal plants from the wild. Now the traders don’t even have to show a certificate of cultivation. It is acknowledged that the decision comes after hectic lobbying from the traders, after which the Union ministries of commerce and environment and forests finally conceded. The question, however, is: how far is this one-eyed approach going to take the country? Opening everything for trade from the wild without any supporting conservation or cultivation mechanism is only going to rape the forests (see ‘Free for all’, Down To Earth, Vol 9, No 14). There is no parallel domestic legislation that curbs exploitation of these species in the wild. The 1972 Wildlife Protection Act does not contain adequate provisions related to medicinal plants. Only six plants are listed in the Schedule VI of the Act of only kuth is a medicinal plant. In domestic trade, it isnot compulsory to show the source of origin of the plant — whether it is cultivated or collected from the wild. They do feature in the state’s list of NTFP that cannot be collected from the wild, but all this does precious little to hinder illegal trade. Cases have been reported where villagers have been exploited to further illegal trade. For instance, in 1993, the government had come under severe criticism by the forest panchayat of village Khaljhuni in Himachal Pradesh regarding commercial exploitation of NTFP. The laborious process of gaining government permits would comprise 13 per cent of the total costs incurred by the villagers in extracting NTFP. The situation encouraged illegal extraction in addition to increasing opportunities for corruption on the part of bureaucrats at the villagers’ expense. This confirms the statement made by Shailja Chandra, secretary, department of Indian systems of medicine and homeopathy, Union ministry of health and family welfare. “There is a lot in the papers but nothing is really being done. We lack a policy and proper direction,” she says. This is a clear pointer to the 1988 Forest Policy, which clearly states: “The rights enjoyed by forestdependent people should be fully protected, their domestic needs of fuelwood, fodder and NTFP should be the first charge on the forest produce.” However, the Forest Policy is not a legal document and state governments are not bound by it. The people are hence unprotected.

Touch and go

Saussurea lappa features in Appendix I of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.
But illegal trade continues unabated. The following is a list of seizures
of the plant or products made from S lappa between 1989 and 1996

Face-saving practices

As the forests get plundered, officials maintain that there is no illegal trade in their region or there is a shortage of staff, especially to manage the country’s porous international borders. Seizures are few. To say the least, they represent only the tip of the iceberg. It is not as if the authorities are not tipped off. They allegedly do not entertain such reports. At times, seizures are carried out as a face-saving exercise by the FD, as was done in September 1999 in Raxaul in West Bengal. A consignment of 7,114 kg of Rauvolfia serpentina (sarpagandha) roots was hauled at the Kolkata dock but only a small penalty was imposed. For the traders, it was just “wait and watch”. Once the effect of the confiscation wore away, they were back to work again. In fact, in such cases, it is usually the herb gatherers who are made the scapegoat. As a forest official puts it: “Seizures do not occur often. On an average, it is just one out of hundred.” For instance, the seizure list of S lappa or products made from the plant is dismal (see table: Touch and go). And this is just one of the hundreds of species that is highly trad-ed. Similarly, a singular seizure of Taxus baccata, which is found only in the Himalayan region, yielded 450,314 kg of the leaves in faraway Tamil Nadu. Taxus leaves yield a drug called Paclitaxel (taxol) used in the treatment of breast, ovarian and lung cancer as well as AIDS.

 

Depending on forests

The fact that medicinal plants are living resources, exhaustible if overused and sustainable if used with care, is little understood by traders, agents and officials concerned, while for the local people involved in the trade it is all about daily bread. In India, it is estimated that collection and processing of medicinal plants contribute to at least 35 million workdays of employment annually to the poor and underemployed workforce. According to the Bhopal-based National Centre for Human Settlements and the Environment, 50 million people live in and around forest areas and rely on collection of NTFP for survival. A study in Tamil Nadu shows that on an average more than 100,000 people enter the forests of the state each day to collect forest produce, which includes medicinal plants. Studies in Rajasthan have indicated that approximately five million tribal people sustain themselves through collection, processing and marketing of NTFP. Their knowledge of the forests is vast, and they are skilled in their job. “Even though the gatherers are uneducated, they are highly knowledgeable about the traditional wisdom related to the medicinal plants,” says P Surendran, director, Society for Tribal Development (STD), Madurai. Yet they continue to be treated as unskilled labourers. A survey of the traditional healers in West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, showed that the price that the collector gets for a kg of Taxus wallichiana (talisapatra) is Rs 4 whereas at the nearby market it is sold for Rs 35 per kg. The price multiplies at each level. “The regrettable thing is that now many people who have no experience or knowledge about medicinal plants are getting involved in the collection and have gradually dominated the scene in many forest areas,” says Thomas. These newcomers, employed as casual labourers by the traders, cause large-scale and irreversible damage. Ignorant of the value of medicinal plants, they harvest them in the most unscientific manner. But for the trader, this arrangement is more profitable than buying from traditional herb gatherers. All that the trader pays is a minimal wage and nothing for the plants per se. If he were to buy from the local people, he would have to cough up the price of the plants and though it is a pittance as far as the price of the herb is concerned, it is much more than the wages he pays to his own gatherers. A few years of this practice is enough to strip the entire forest wealth. TRAFFIC-India has come up with specific data on medicinal plants that are traded in the country. Species like Aconitum heterophyllum (ativisha), for instance, which is considered critically endangered, fetches an average price of 2,690 per kg. Its availability is decreasing in the range of 26-50 per cent annually (see table: National overview).

Chaotic best

An unorganised market definitely makes better business sense to the traders and agents. There are no bills involved, no policies, forest officials are easy to please and local communities have no option but to further their business interests. This leaves most of the communities of herb gatherers at the mercy of the traditional money-lenders turned primary herb traders and forest officials, who are considered demi-gods by them because they are allowed access into the otherwise ‘protected areas’. Meanwhile, all that the government is interested in doing is banning certain species or liberalising trade without any support mechanisms. There are hardly any studies indicating what is endangered and where. Policies are framed arbitrarily keeping in mind the bigger players, including the traders’ lobby. Millions of collectors have little incentive or skill (in the case of casual labourers) to practice scientific and sustainable harvesting. The fresh trend of involving those who have no prior association with collecting forest produce is endangering the resources further. The Uttar Pradesh forest plan, for instance, mentions that people involved in collection should be imparted proper training but then the entire exercise finishes with giving the contract to the Bhesaj Sangh, the state cooperative body. Whether the people used by the cooperative to collect the produce are trained or just employed to serve the demands are left for the unqualified forest guards to check.

A Himalayan tragedy

People who have no idea about forests step in to further trade, while the indigenous herb gatherers get exploited further

In April 1999, a director of a reputed environmental organisation in Dehradun was tipped off about 12 trucks waiting at the check-post in Dehradun. They were carrying in various quantities medicinal plants that did not feature in the list of NTFP allowed to be collected in the region comprising Uttaranchal, then a part of Uttar Pradesh. A strike had forced the trucks to halt. He tried to garner support from various quarters to take action, but to no avail. When the strike ended, the trucks loaded with the banned materials made their way through the check-post and beyond. “It is useless trying to talk to the people in the forest department or even to organisations that claim to be proactive in conservation issues,” he says. This is just one incident. Everyday tonnes of plants and herbs find their way out of the herb-rich state of Uttaranchal. The reasons are the same as elsewhere: a well-established nexus between forest officials, traders and the agents. While the forests continue to get plundered, the FD has its own story to say. Every year, the FD auctions land for contract to collect certain species and pay the gatherers a stipulated amount and FD a stipulated sum of money. For more than a decade now, the contract has gone to Bhesaj Sangh, whose members include forest-dependent local people. FD’s role ends with the signing of the contract. “How they execute is their sole prerogative,” says Sunil Pande, deputy conservator of forests, Dehradun circle. So far so good. But the problem starts right thereafter. Firstly, once Bhesaj Sangh sends the gatherers into the forests, there is no check on what is collected. The one person who is supposed to keep a tab — the forest guard — prefers to stay away or is hardly qualified for the job. The FD keeps harping on the “shortage of staff” excuse, while the medicinal wealth finds its way out of the forests through many routes. Secondly, the money paid to the gatherers by the cooperative is much lower than the rate offered by private traders. The prices offered for Picrorhiza kurrooa (kutki), for instance, by the cooperative was Rs 22.25 per kg whereas private traders offered Rs 56 — an encouragement to collectors to sell the produce through illegal channels. The experience in Kerala is no different (see box: The Kerala experience). There is more than one channel available for further destruction of the verdant Uttaranchal hills. “Traders from Dehradun or Delhi now employ people who have no links with the forests. The motive is to collect as much as they can,” says Balendu Prakash, director, Vaidya Chandra Prakash Cancer Research Foundation (VCPCRF) Dehradun, who uses medicinal plants in the treatment of cancer. The causal labourers gather herbs in the most unscientific, destructive and non-sustainable methods. The exact quantity of the herbs being harvested cannot be ascertained. The traders insist that there is no problem as far as getting raw materials isconcerned. In the words of one trader in Dehradun. “There is no problem of getting raw materials. If it gets rare in one area, we can always get it from another.” A few years more, and getting raw materials will surely become a problem. Across borders The border stretch between India, Nepal and Bhutan, especially through the states of West Bengal and Bihar are freefor- all herb trade areas. The Calcutta drug market is the hub for raw materials coming from the east and northeastern part of the country as well as Nepal, China, Myanmar and Bhutan. Species in high demand include critically endangered species like Coptis teeta (mamira), Aquilaria malaccensis (agarwood), sarpagandha and talisapatra. States like Arunachal Pradesh provide the maximum supply, especially of ginseng and Taxus leaves. “It is such a huge borderline that it is just not possible to keep a tab on what is happening across the entire line,” says Abhijit Roychowdhury, inspector, Wildlife Protection Authority, Kolkata. The check-posts at the borders are expected to have at least one person who is competent to identify the species that are being traded, but then the everready reply is shortage of staff. Consignments usually pass through the borders unheeded through many channels. In order to import or export commodities, one requires a permit. But forged certificates are easily available. Traders, who find it very easy to con the check-posts that exist in the region, exploit the close social contact between villagers located on either side of the borders. Herbs are put in gunny bags and brought into India or taken to Nepal by the local people, says Hirak Nandy, consultant, World Wide Fund for Nature-Kolkata. Or in most cases, the villagers hide contraband within materials of daily use and pass it on to the villages at the other side of the border. The other channels used are of reexport and substitution of names of banned species with the ones that can be legally traded. The collection from forest areas in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are smuggled into Nepal from where it re-exported to India with a certificate of cultivation. Procuring certificates of cultivation for species in Appendix II of the CITES list is another mode resorted to while carrying out inter-border trade. They are collected from the wild usually by the local people and sold to agents, who then plant it in nurseries across the country. The traders then ‘manage’ a certificate of cultivation. A raw drug trader in Kolkata assures that it is very easy to procure such certificates or forge the export permits. The bigger traders or wholesalers from various parts of the country also come directly or send their agents to certain towns in the northeastern region of the country to procure material collected from the forests in these states. Traders from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal go to places like Pasighat, Dibrugarh, Guwahati and Silchar in Assam and wait in various hotels known for medicinal plant trade in the state. They lodge themselves till they garner a truckload. Each truck contains about 2-5.5 tonnes of medicinal plants, say traders on conditions of anonymity. They are products that face a demand of 18-30 tonnes per trader. Depending on the content, each truck load is worth Rs 2.5-5 lakh. At times, plants and herbs that can be traded legally is used as a cover for the material for which extraction is banned. As trucks loaded with medicinal plants make their way to different parts of the country more traders continue to flock the hotels for the next consignment.

The Kerala experience

The Girijan Cooperative Society in Kerala is responsible for managing over 120 non-timber forest produce that includes a sizeable number of medicinal plants. However, present assessments show that the cooperative is plagued by problems similar to the one Uttaranchal faces. A comparison of the prices offered by the cooperative and the private traders show that the prices offered by the latter are much higher. According to an International Development Research Centre report on the medicinal plant sector of India, the prices (for species in high demand) between the one offered by the cooperative to the collector and that by the raw drug trader varied between 767 per cent to 1,757 per cent. 

Dubious deals: truckloads of herbs from the border areas and India’s northeast find its way into shady herb markets like
Khari Baoli in Delhi, Avenue Road in Bangalore and G B N Street in Chennai

last year's drought in western Rajasthan had its beginnings in September and October when there was erratic and deficient rainfall, not uncommon to these parts of the country. Over Rs 800 crore was spent to counter the calamity. Since 1955, Rs 3,600 crore has been spent under Desert Development Programme and Drought Prone Area Development Programmes. Yet, there has been little difference at the ground level. To tackle this anomaly, drought relief measures have been assessed by agencies like The Oxfam (India) Trust, Ahmedabad through The School of Desert Sciences (sds), Jodhpur and the Disaster Mitigation Institute, Ahmedabad. sds carried out assessment studies between August 5 and September 10, 2000 in 16 villages covering Jodhpur, Jalore, Jaisalmer and Barmer.

The studies show that there is a clear difference between relief offered by the ngo s and that provided by the state. State agency works are directed more towards drought proofing the area by supporting permanent works related to water, construction of roads, schools, shops and airstrips besides food for work, cash for work, cattle camps, fodder supply and medical intervention. ngo s' works are more towards people's drought proofing and confined to individual support and those to community water structures, grain distribution, cash doles, cattle camps, fodder distribution, health camps, plantation and providing employment.

However, neither has the drought proofing of the area got off the ground nor were the people economically empowered. Most of the permanent works remained incomplete, abandoned for want of funds. It is high time that we redefine drought proofing mechanisms and interventions to generate more employment on a permanent basis.

Simple employment generation plans are needed. Eradication of mesquite (Prosopis juliflora) and lantana bushes (Viburnum lantana) should be taken up to generate useable biomass based on native species. They can also be used for food, fodder, thatching and fencing, herbal backup and as raw material for craft and cottage industries. Solar energy, biogas plants and other rural based economy generating jobs are the need of the hour during droughts.

Preserving and developing traditional water bodies should receive top priority with some kind of cost-effective mechanism and the management and ownership of water bodies should be decided in advance. Fodder banks have to be created in areas where natural pasturage is available. Such pasturelands should be optimally used and harvested scientifically. The procedure for deciding the relief beneficiaries needs to be revised. Information cells should be opened at village and tehsil levels. A nodal agency comprising ngo s and citizens should be formed to make the relief agencies accountable. The issue of crop and livestock insurance has to be decided as a coping mechanism. In the desert, rainfall records should be maintained in schools so that there is no delay in declaring drought affected zones.

If a modest beginning is made in these sectors for rural poor, irrespective of caste and creed, the livelihood issues can be addressed with positive results.



The author is director, The School of Desert Sciences

It is a common sight near every forest area to see loaded trucks making their way through the dark cover of the night. The first thought that crosses one's mind is that they are weighed down with timber. Wrong. Many times, what is being carried out is the herbal treasure of the forests. Everyday, tonnes of material worth millions of rupees are smuggled from the forests to markets within and outside the country. As agents and traders -- through exploitation of local people -- strip the forests of their wealth, the fd expresses helplessness. Meantime, the list of threatened species keeps increasing.

To say the least, trade in medicinal plants is a 'free-for-all' zone. "I can collect whatever I want and in whatever quantities I think feasible," asserts an agent, who refuses to be named. The forest officials can be bought off easily, allege the same traders.Meanwhile, the local people, mostly tribal, who are dependent on the forests for sustenance, have no other option but to abet illegal trade. In most cases, herb gatherers venture into the forests to collect plants demanded by the agents (who are also money lenders). They submit their collections to him for a paltry sum (and also borrow from him to tide over their needs). The agent then sells to traders who sell it further. The forest officials are, needless to say, hand-in-glove with the traders. The major markets for these products include Bara Bazar in Kolkata, Khari Baoli in Delhi, Avenue Road in Bangalore and G B N Street in Chennai.

Says one trader in Madurai: "I sell about a tonne of Saussurea costus (kuth) in the peak season." This species features in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (cites) and the Negative List of exports issued by the Union ministry of commerce. In other words, export is prohibited. But domestic trade at such sizeable quantities and export are doing nothing to improve its 'critically endangered' status. It is only pushing it to the last possibly category: extinction.

Legal loopholes
cites, which was ratified in 1982 by over 150 countries that includes India, regulates international trade in species threatened with extinction. The three appendices to cites list the species for which these regulations currently apply.

At present, 11 Indian medicinal plants are included in the appendices, wherein only one namely S costus , which is synonymous with S lappa in trade, is included in Appendix I (see table: Threat status). For species that feature in Appendix II of the cites list, a certificate of cultivation is required for export. But that is easily available either by greasing the palms of the officials concerned or by forging documents. Traders confide that most pharmaceutical firms buy from them, but there are no bills involved. The plants are used in their products to maintain the efficacy but the names are not printed in the constituent list of the product.

Export and import of medicinal plants in India are regulated by the Exim (Export-Import) Policy of the government of India and cities. A regulation under the Exim policy is the Negative List of exports of 56 plant species issued by the ministry of commerce in 1992. This was reduced to 29 in 1998. Traders, however, allege that even the shortened list does not portray a true picture and have been lobbying for the removal of some species from the list. Says D B A Narayana of the Dabur Research Foundation, Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh, "There should be a period after which the plants should be removed from the list."

The recent order by the Union ministry of environment and forests has only made matters easy for the traders. Barring a mere 114 species, the government has freed export of all medicinal plants from the wild. Now the traders don't even have to show a certificate of cultivation. It is acknowledged that the decision comes after hectic lobbying from the traders, after which the Union ministries of commerce and environment and forests finally conceded. The question, however, is: how far is this one-eyed approach going to take the country? Opening everything for trade from the wild without any supporting conservation or cultivation mechanism is only going to rape the forests (see 'Free for all', Down To Earth , Vol 9, No 14). There is no parallel domestic legislation that curbs exploitation of these species in the wild. The 1972 Wildlife Protection Act does not contain adequate provisions related to medicinal plants. Only six plants are listed in the Schedule vi of the Act of only kuth is a medicinal plant. In domestic trade, it is not compulsory to show the source of origin of the plant -- whether it is cultivated or collected from the wild. They do feature in the state's list of ntfp that cannot be collected from the wild, but all this does precious little to hinder illegal trade.

Cases have been reported where villagers have been exploited to further illegal trade. For instance, in 1993, the government had come under severe criticism by the forest panchayat of village Khaljhuni in Himachal Pradesh regarding commercial exploitation of ntfp . The laborious process of gaining government permits would comprise 13 per cent of the total costs incurred by the villagers in extracting ntfp . The situation encouraged illegal extraction in addition to increasing opportunities for corruption on the part of bureaucrats at the villagers' expense. This confirms the statement made by Shailja Chandra, secretary, department of Indian systems of medicine and homeopathy, Union ministry of health and family welfare. "There is a lot in the papers but nothing is really being done. We lack a policy and proper direction," she says. This is a clear pointer to the 1988 Forest Policy, which clearly states: "The rights enjoyed by forest-dependent people should be fully protected, their domestic needs of fuelwood, fodder and ntfp should be the first charge on the forest produce." However, the Forest Policy is not a legal document and state governments are not bound by it. The people are hence unprotected.

Face-saving practices
As the forests get plundered, officials maintain that there is no illegal trade in their region or there is a shortage of staff, especially to manage the country's porous international borders. Seizures are few. To say the least, they represent only the tip of the iceberg. It is not as if the authorities are not tipped off. They allegedly do not entertain such reports.

At times, seizures are carried out as a face-saving exercise by the fd , as was done in September 1999 in Raxaul in West Bengal. A consignment of 7,114 kg of Rauvolfia serpentina (sarpagandha) roots was hauled at the Kolkata dock but only a small penalty was imposed. For the traders, it was just "wait and watch". Once the effect of the confiscation wore away, they were back to work again. In fact, in such cases, it is usually the herb gatherers who are made the scapegoat.

As a forest official puts it: "Seizures do not occur often. On an average, it is just one out of hundred." For instance, the seizure list of S lappa or products made from the plant is dismal (see table: Touch and go). And this is just one of the hundreds of species that is highly traded. Similarly, a singular seizure of Taxus baccata, which is found only in the Himalayan region, yielded 450,314 kg of the leaves in faraway Tamil Nadu. Taxus leaves yield a drug called Paclitaxel (taxol) used in the treatment of breast, ovarian and lung cancer as well as aids.

Depending on forests
The fact that medicinal plants are living resources, exhaustible if overused and sustainable if used with care, is little understood by traders, agents and officials concerned, while for the local people involved in the trade it is all about daily bread. In India, it is estimated that collection and processing of medicinal plants contribute to at least 35 million workdays of employment annually to the poor and underemployed workforce. According to the Bhopal-based National Centre for Human Settlements and the Environment, 50 million people live in and around forest areas and rely on collection of ntfp for survival. A study in Tamil Nadu shows that on an average more than 100,000 people enter the forests of the state each day to collect forest produce, which includes medicinal plants. Studies in Rajasthan have indicated that approximately five million tribal people sustain themselves through collection, processing and marketing of ntfp . Their knowledge of the forests is vast, and they are skilled in their job. "Even though the gatherers are uneducated, they are highly knowledgeable about the traditional wisdom related to the medicinal plants," says P Surendran, director, Society for Tribal Development (std), Madurai. Yet they continue to be treated as unskilled labourers. A survey of the traditional healers in West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, showed that the price that the collector gets for a kg of Taxus wallichiana (talisapatra)is Rs 4 whereas at the nearby market it is sold for Rs 35 per kg. The price multiplies at each level.

"The regrettable thing is that now many people who have no experience or knowledge about medicinal plants are getting involved in the collection and have gradually dominated the scene in many forest areas," says Thomas. These newcomers, employed as casual labourers by the traders, cause large-scale and irreversible damage. Ignorant of the value of medicinal plants, they harvest them in the most unscientific manner. But for the trader, this arrangement is more profitable than buying from traditional herb gatherers. All that the trader pays is a minimal wage and nothing for the plants per se. If he were to buy from the local people, he would have to cough up the price of the plants and though it is a pittance as far as the price of the herb is concerned, it is much more than the wages he pays to his own gatherers. A few years of this practice is enough to strip the entire forest wealth.

traffic- India has come up with specific data on medicinal plants that are traded in the country. Species like Aconitum heterophyllum (ativisha), for instance, which is considered critically endangered, fetches an average price of 2,690 per kg. Its availability is decreasing in the range of 26-50 per cent annually (see table: National overview).

Chaotic best
An unorganised market definitely makes better business sense to the traders and agents. There are no bills involved, no policies, forest officials are easy to please and local communities have no option but to further their business interests.

This leaves most of the communities of herb gatherers at the mercy of the traditional money-lenders turned primary herb traders and forest officials, who are considered demi-gods by them because they are allowed access into the otherwise 'protected areas'.

Meanwhile, all that the government is interested in doing is banning certain species or liberalising trade without any support mechanisms. There are hardly any studies indicating what is endangered and where. Policies are framed arbitrarily keeping in mind the bigger players, including the traders' lobby. Millions of collectors have little incentive or skill (in the case of casual labourers) to practice scientific and sustainable harvesting. The fresh trend of involving those who have no prior association with collecting forest produce is endangering the resources further. The Uttar Pradesh forest plan, for instance, mentions that people involved in collection should be imparted proper training but then the entire exercise finishes with giving the contract to the Bhesaj Sangh, the state cooperative body. Whether the people used by the cooperative to collect the produce are trained or just employed to serve the demands are left for the unqualified forest guards to check.

The Indian herbal industry is estimated to have a turnover of Rs 2,300 crore annually. It is also involved in the export of finished products, intermediaries and bulk raw materials. More than 90 per cent of the plant species used by the industry are, however, collected from the wild of which 70 per cent involves unorganised harvesting that is invariably destructive. It is primarily plants in which the roots have medicinal properties that is most affected, says M P Sharma, plant taxonomist, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi. "Plants which feature in the Union ministry of commerce list and are banned from export such as mamira , kutki , Nardostachys grandiflora (jatamansi) and Podophyllum hexandrum (ban kakri) are scarce," he says. Suresh Chaturvedi, a vaidya (traditional physician) from Mumbai and recipient of the Padmashree award, and M B Akkalkotkar of the Ayurveda Research Institute, Pune, add to the list some tree species such as Saraca indica (ashoka), Commiphora mukul (guggulu) and Symplococos racemosa (lodhra). One way of assessing the shortage is the ever-increasing prices. For instance, one kilogramme of A heterophyllum or ativisha has gone up from Rs 200 per kg to more than Rs 2,000 per kg in the last 15 years, says P K Warrier, chief physician, Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal, Kerala. This kind of price rise cannot be attributed to increase in demand alone.

"Simply put, all the plants needed for ayurveda are in short supply," summarises vaidya Nagendra Nath Dixit of Lucknow. "While rich vaidyas can afford to buy herbs at higher prices, the poor ones who are catering to the poor community are unable to do so," says Balendu Prakash, a practicing ayurvedic physician and director of vcpcrf. The basic philosophy of ayurveda that health care should be available to all is lost.

It is estimated that there are some 600,000 registered practitioners in the country today. Add to that the 95 approved and 45 temporarily approved ayurveda and 31 Unani colleges churning out thousands of new practitioners every year. If the plunder of the forests to fill the coffers of a few is to continue, the plight of the practitioners can well be left to imagination.

All this comes at a time when ism is gaining immense favour in developed countries like the us as an alternative system of medicine. At present, the global turnover in herbal medicines is around us $12 billion, but India's share is negligible. "The shortage is going to affect the growth of India's herbal product industry, which hopes to go from a Rs 460 crore export business to a Rs 3,000 crore trade by 2005," says Rajendra Gupta, former all-India coordinator, medicinal and aromatic plants research, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi. Effects of the shortage
According to N Singh, director, International Institute of Herbal Medicines, Lucknow, who is also engaged in cultivation of some plants like brahmi (Bacopa monnieri) and ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), the raw material available in the market is "manure". The shortage has induced collectors to use adulterants. Moreover, in many cases the collectors -- who are employed as casual labourers -- have very little idea of the medicinal plants. They not only devastate the ecology, but also do a lot of "mixing" unconsciously because of their lack of knowledge about medicinal plants. Vaidyas who in earlier times used to set out to the forests themselves to collect the plants do not do so anymore. The plants are no longer found in accessible areas.

The raw materials can also lose their potency during the time it is transported from one place to another. "Due to unavailability of some plants in Kerala, we have to be get them from Tamil Nadu," says Warrier. Lack of proper storage facilities on the route along with lack of knowledge of preservation techniques does no good to the final product. But not many manufacturers, especially big firms that use medicinal plants in their concoctions, are bothered about the quality of the raw materials. In any case, protocols for testing the quality of finished products are non-existent. According to Mohammad Iqbal, head, department of botany, Jamia Hamdard, "Sometimes microorganisms like fungi can grow on the material and make the herb toxic." One of the best-known ayurvedic concoctions, chyavanprash is widely favoured for enhancing the human body's immunity system. It comprises 70 ingredients, but 85 per cent of it is amla (Embilica officinalis). But, according to Meenakshi Sharma, an ayurvedic physician based in Delhi, India is not producing enough amla needed to prepare the amount of chyavanprash available in the market. "What the manufacturers are doing is using sweet potato instead. This reduces the efficacy of the product," she says. "In fact, the chyavanprash that is available today tastes sweet and not bitter," she adds. "Honey is substituted by sugar. This can be harmful to diabetics and those suffering from high cholestrol levels," says Balendu Prakash. Shortage of medicinal plants is further aggravated by the export of raw materials. Because of quality controls, buyers from developed countries do not accept finished products from India. Hence, the only alternative is to sell raw materials, once again short-term profit motives destroy long-term benefits. Sumeet Rai of Maharishi Herbals, New Delhi, who exports botanical and medicinal herbs, agrees that he chooses the best materials available for export. "Generally, Indian companies do not buy the materials at the same price," he says.

Road to extinction
In India, over 7,500 species of plants are estimated to be used by 4,635 communities for human and veterinary purposes. Besides, 400-odd plant species are used by the phyto-pharmaceutical industry to manufacture standard medicines based on ism . For instance, kutki is used to treat liver and spleen ailments, while ativisha is used to treat fever. It is believed to work as an aphrodisiac, too (see table: Herbal cure). Unfortunately, many of these plants have already been assessed as endangered, vulnerable and threatened due to overexploitation in the wild. Habitat destruction in the form of deforestation is an added danger. A threat assessment exercise of 75 plants of northern, northeast, and central India as per the revised World Conservation Union (iucn) red list criteria was undertaken by India's Biodiversity Conservation Prioritisation Project (bccp) through the Conservation Assessment and Management Plan process in 1998. The experts categorised them as follows:

l Critically endangered: 35

l Endangered: 16

l Vulnerable: 15

l Lower risk near threatened: 7, and

l Data deficient: 2

traffic -India points out that a very high percentage of threatened medicinal plants as assessed in the exercise may not reflect the actual position for all medicinal plants in India because the 75 taxa assessed represent better studied plants, which may have been selected by experts due to concern over their conservation, not necessarily over concern for ism.

Nevertheless, traffic- India compiled a list of 471 plants important to ism and modern medicine and a list of 226 threatened medicinal plants according to various status assessment exercises undertaken in India. Comparing these two lists revealed that 51 medicinal plants are vital to ism, but they are threatened.

Following the iucn pattern, the Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta, brings out the Red Data Book of Indian Plants that classifies plants into six categories -- extinct, endangered, vulnerable, rare, insufficiently known and out of danger. The last category includes plants that had earlier belonged to either one of the first five categories, but have become sufficiently available overtime.

Due to insufficient data on the use of medicinal plants for domestic trade, it is very difficult to say which of the plants are most used. Preferring to keep their trade a secret, manufacturers and practitioners are also tight-lipped on the species they use. A report prepared by the Planning Commission's taskforce on conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants lists 25 most used plants in ism . Led by D N Tewari, the taskforce report includes four critically endangered (ativisha, jatamansi, Swertia chirata and kuth); two endangered (Berberis aristata, kutki) and one vulnerable (gurmar)species according to the bccp list.

Natural Remedies Private Limited, a Bangalore-based company manufacturing herbal extracts, alone lists 13 plant/herb species which are needed in quantities more than 50,000 kg per year, while a study of the medicinal plants requirement of Kerala in 1995 lists 10 species which are needed in quantities more than one million kg a year. These are only a few examples of the requirement of medicinal plants and herbs manufacturers of herbal products face -- an indicator of how much herbs and plants are required by the industry.

Comparing Tewari's list with that of Natural Remedies and Kerala's, one can easily see that the former does not include many plants, which are required in large quantities. Garcinia indica (kokum) and Aegle marmelos are the only species that find a mention in the Planning Commission list.

Besides, most of the species listed by Natural Remedies are tree species, which are in short supply, while the Planning Commission's focus is on annuals and biennials (see table: Plants in demand).

Considering the shortage of medicinal plants and the need to sustain ism, cultivation and sustainable harvesting of plants from the wild has become absolutely necessary. One way of solving the problem would be to encourage cultivation by small farmers and tribal people and make big manufacturers of herbal products source their requirements from them.

Rajendra Gupta has identified some techniques for cultivation. The biodiversity-rich areas could be identified and the materials could be grown there. Many tree species could also be grown around agricultural lands or some plants can also be grown along with other plants/crops. For instance, ashwagandha can be grown with soybean and garlic. Cultivation would help one more problem -- adulteration. "The authenticity of the medicinal plant can be ensured only through cultivation," feels Mohammad Iqbal. And the best thing way of doing so is by involving small-scale farmers in the cultivation and to grow plants that are region-specific. Specificity of the herbs can actually be of advantage to the country. Cultivation of ashwagandha in California, for instance, was a failure, informs Akhilesh Sharma, consulting ayurvedic physician and founder chairperson of the Global Society for Promotion of Ayurveda According to him, it was found that the plants did not have "active ingredients" in required concentrations. In viewof this, it seems more feasible to grow plants in their natural habitats or at least in areas which are near to the habitat.

Another crucial factor is involvement of local communities, especially in small fragmented areas. However, Shailja Chandra, secretary, department of ism& homeopathy under the ministry of health and family welfare (mohfw), feels it is not feasible to involve communities as their plants may not be of the same quality -- a typical government reaction to which many experts beg to differ (see interview: "Maybe communities can be involved to cater to the local needs").

"Traditionally, it has been the tribal communities and women who protect the rich biodiversity of the region" says M S Swaminathan, eminent agricultural scientist and director of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. As an added advantage, the cultivation of medicinal plants would in fact prove to be a source of income for the communities. Communities in the medicinal plant rich areas can be identified and they can form cooperatives under the village panchayat . "As the panchayats can take up the work of interacting with the forest officer, the communities can grow the plants without having to run around to get certificates," says Balendu Prakash.
Land availability Where cultivation is concerned, land availability comes a cropper. In India, there is hardly any land that is not under cultivation. The only options are forest lands, which are under the government, and revenue wastelands, on which the government is now attempting to cultivate medicinal plants. Regarding cultivation on forest tracts, the government, under the Integrated Tribal Development Project, allowed the Kani tribe of the Western Ghats to grow Trichopus zeylanica (arogyapacha) in the forests, but did not allow the sale.

In this case, the people were allowed to grow the plant in the backyards of their forest settlements. But as the forest officials could not differentiate between the plant that grew in the wild and that which was being cultivated, the people were stopped from taking the material out. This not only took away their only source of livelihood, but also forced closure of the unit -- Arya Vaidya Pharmacy in Coimbatore -- that was dependent on arogyapacha for manufacturing Jeevani, a herbal tonic. Unless glitches such as this are removed, there is no place to carry out cultivation. "The forest officers do not know anything about the medicinal plants and neither would they gain anything by growing them in the forest and, therefore, they are least interested to pay them any attention," says Rajendra Gupta.
Traders rule Keeping aside the option of using forest land, the other way of ensuring cultivation is by encouraging farmers to grow plants on land where crop cultivation is already being carried out. For this, the farmer needs to be given government incentives to move from an assured market to a risky one. These incentives are totally lacking at present. The government does not have any project to invite small farmers, nor does it make cultivation easy through providing seeds and loans. Even though farmers would be earning eight times more than the money they make by growing wheat or rice, they are not willing to grow medicinal plants, says Balendu Prakash.

A large number of studies carried out by different organisations have shown that the cultivation of medicinal plants is a very lucrative business. But at present the cultivator has to take risk of the whole enterprise himself. "Starting from the identification of the plant that can be grown in his soil to the identification of the buyer, the whole thing has to be done by the farmer himself," says B G Agochia of Gandharva Nursery and Floriculture, a Jabalpur-based firm involved in the cultivation of medicinal plants for the last 19 years.

Says Chandra: "We will have to have a buy back policy. For this, it is necessary to know the actual demand for the raw material and the traders have to come forward with these figures." The Medicinal Plants Board, which was established in November 2000 to look into "all aspects" related to medicinal plants, will decide on the incentives, besides deciding on conservation and collection of raw materials, legal issues and patents. The board comprises trade, marketing, pharmaceutical industry and medico-ethnobotany representatives. Cultivators, researchers, non-governmental organisations and state government are also expected to play a crucial role in the functioning of the board.

Ranjit Puranik, chief executive officer of Dhootapapeshwar Limited, Mumbai, also feels it is necessary to know the consumption figures before giving the buy back assurance. But manufacturers and traders are highly tight-lipped about their consumption data. Consumption figures of some companies and the money spent on raw materials have been compiled by the Planning Commission, but the information is sorely insufficient.

Besides, manufacturers and traders are not keen on buying raw materials from the farmers because material collected from the wild is available at a lower price. There are no cultivation charges because booty from the wild is free for all. And herb gatherers are anyway exploited in the most ruthless manner. Agochia gives an example of amla : cultivated amla costs some Rs 5 per kg, but that collected from the wild is available for Rs 2 per kg.

Traders and agents literally control the market prices. Practitioners of ism want government intervention to make the market more organised. Warrier feels that the government should buy the raw material from the farmers, and then supply it to the manufacturers. If this is done, agents and mediators can also be sidelined, he says. But given the experience of the nationalised ntfp business, where government controls the sale, it is doubtful whether this arrangement, too, will work.

Legal tangles
Besides the lack of incentives to grow medicinal plants in the backyard, the legal tangles are too many for small-scale farmers to handle. The Centre has two main laws governing medicinal plants, namely the Indian Forest Act 1927 and the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, but different states have amended the rules as per their specific requirements.

In Gujarat, the cultivator has to get his name registered with the state government if he cultivates amounts exceeding that prescribed as per the Gujarat Minor Forest Produce Trade Nationalisation Act, 1979. The Kuth Act 1978 of Jammu and Kashmir bans the cultivation of kuth, Dioscorea deltoidea (singali), Atropa belladonna (belladonna), Colchicum luteum, Podophyllum emodi, Lavetra kashmiriana, Hyoscymous niger, Artemisia maritima and Inula racemosa (puskarmool), which are all very important to ism . The state of Himachal Pradesh gives loans, but only for collecting, marketing and processing medicinal plants -- not cultivation.

Until recently, when Uttaranchal was given statehood, there was a restriction on cultivation of medicinal plants. The cultivator had to register with the Bhesaj Sangh, a state cooperative body. At the time of harvest, both the Bhesaj Sangh officials and the forest officials inspected the plants. The royalty that was levied on the sales was as high as 10 per cent. Says Balendu Prakash, "As the process of getting a licence required a lot of running around, the farmers who lived in remote areas were not able to grow the medicinal plants." But after the formation of the state, the legalities have been relaxed, more so due to the persistent efforts of Balendu Prakash. "We have 600 farmers ready to grow medicinal plants," he says.

Research requirements
Two main government organisations involved in the process of development of agritechniques are the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (icar) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (csir). While both the institutions are emphasising on the cultivation of annuals and biennials, the plants that are in short supply are usually perennial like products from trees. Tree species are also among the most-needed for ism . They account for 33 per cent of the total need, the rest is sourced from herbs, shrubs and climbers. "Research institutes are not interested in working on perennials as it takes a long time for the results to show," says Rajendra Gupta.

The major chunks of the funds available to the department of ism&h, created specially for the purpose of creating some order out of the chaos, are being used for the purpose of education and research. Though research also includes a small amount of focus on the cultivation of plants, it is mainly for demonstration purposes. One fails to understand the usefulness of the research when the plants that are being researched continue to disappear through overexploitation and environmental degradation.

The Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (cimap), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, has been established under csir and the National Research Centre on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (nrcmap), Anand, Gujarat, has been set up under icar to study quick-growing herbs. Both ncrmap and cimap have so far developed 30-odd techniques but instead of providing practical knowledge about medicinal plants to the farmers, the institutes are content on carrying out theoretical research, allege vaidyas .

"We are never involved in the process of deciding which plants need to be worked on," says Brij Bihari, practicing ayurvedic physician based in Lucknow. This way the country is losing out on the experience the practitioners have. But A K Singh of the technology transfer division, cimap, says: "We cannot give out any information regarding what we are working on due to the problems with the intellectual property rights."

There is a lot of duplication in the efforts between the two institutes and even within institutes. For example, under icar, Gujarat Agricultural University, Haryana Agriculture University and Jawaharlal Nehru Kirshi Vishwa Vidyalaya , Madhya Pradesh are all working on liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), which is used in the manufacture of cough syrups.

Meanwhile, in its Vision 2020: Perspective Plan, nrcmap has listed the names of plants on which the work would be carried out in the next 20 years. The choice of plants to be researched is poor. Plants like isabgol (Plantago ovata), senna (Cassia angustifolia) and ashwagandha on which work has been going on for the last couple of decades will be extended.

Many other plants, which neither feature in cites, Tewari's or the ministry of commerce's list, are being researched by nrcmap though they are available in abundance. Further, plants like Artemisia annua and talisapatra, which also feature in nrcmap's list, are already being studied by cimap. So in the next 20 years, too, we cannot really hope to have agritechniques for plants that are in need, in short supply but are very cultivable.

The government, under new schemes, is now funding many institutions to undertake research on agritechniques. In 1995, the department of ism&h identified 133 plants for which agritechniques needed to be developed. During 1997-98, the department sanctioned 26 projects for 94 species. During year 1998-99, eight more were sanctioned to cover 32 more plants. Institutes such a nbpgr, Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, Kerala Agriculture University, G B Pant University in Uttaranchal are at present involved in the work. "We hope to get important information by the end of five years," says Rajendra Gupta.

However, unless the institutes work with farmers and the government revises its policies on cultivation, the research could remain on paper. Besides, the list of plants on which work is going on is not comprehensive. Some of the tree species like agarwood and Cedrus deodara (devdar), which have been in short supply for more than a decade are not being worked on, according to the list provided by Sandu Brothers, Mumbai-based manufacturers of herbal products, to the Planning Commission.

Realising the importance of medicinal plants in the health care system available to the poor people, the department of family welfare of the mohfw started the vanaspati van yojna as part of the reproductive and child health programme in October 1997. In other words, it means converting large areas of wastelands into forests of medicinal plants and herbs. Around 3,000-5,000 ha of land would be identified in each state for cultivation. The Centre would provide financial assistance of Rs one crore per year per van for five years, after which it has to be self-sufficient. The Planning Commission recommends that there should be at least 200 such vans , which would require a total investment of Rs 750 crore. It would come under the joint forest management programme, where people's participation becomes mandatory. It should be managed by a registered society headed by the divisional forest officer.

The government hopes to bring 31.85 million ha of wastelands and denuded forest land across the country under vanaspati vans . But even the "wastelands" have to have productive soil, an irrigation system and few biotic pressures. This is asking for too much. There are two types of wastelands in India. One that is barren because of high salinity and the other which is in the hands of the revenue department and is used as village common lands. A large area of denuded forest land is also classified wasteland. "Medicinal plants growing in these areas would not be of good quality. Reclamation of such lands is a time-consuming process and the cost could be a crucial factor," says Rajendra Gupta. Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have already been denied the funds because the land they had chosen was not considered appropriate for the plants they had chosen to cultivate. So far, only a few states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have been sanctioned the money. Some states have highlighted the lack of a continuous stretch 3,000-5,000 ha of land. Chandra feels that for the programme to be successful, some amendments have to be made. Accordingly she has asked A R Nanda, secretary, department of family welfare, to reevaluate the scheme and "generally revise it so that smaller pieces of land can be used for the purpose".

The kinds of plants that should be cultivated are also yet to be decided. "Initially, the states can use their own people to identify the plants. Later the Medicinal Plants Board will lay down guidelines," says Chandra. Balendu Prakash feels that the programme will be very successful if region-specific plants are emphasised upon. "If the government tries to grow alien plants in the area, the only existing source of native species might also get lost," he warns.

Balendu Prakash himself has been involved in the cultivation of naturally-growing species with the participation of the local communities. The Community Herb Cultivation Centre of vcpcrf has undertaken a project in Raipur district of Dehradun, Uttaranchal. Communities have been fully involved in the cultivation of 20 commonly-found plants in the area. The first harvest -- six quintals of konch ( Mucuna prurita ) -- will be handed over to the traders, with whom a buy-back arrangement was made, on January 25.
Time for change The current disorganised trade in medicinal plants benefits only traders and agents. The local people and the practitioners of medicinal plants want a change in the system in the form of government intervention. Unfortunately, experience with ntfp shows that it does not help the local people eventually. Hence, the sound option would be cultivation, especially by small-scale farmers. But again, at present there are no incentives for them to grow medicinal plants.

Growing in the forests is a problem, so is growing on private lands. The government has proposed vanaspati vans but land availability is a problem again. The land requirement as per the scheme is between 3,000-5,000 ha, a stretch no farmer can own. Then there are no legal provisions nor marketing access.

If the government wants to tide over the shortage of medicinal plants, it has to promote cultivation on private lands. The forest department should also permit communities who have traditionally lived in and around forest to cultivate or scientifically harvest medicinal plants in the wild. And scientific research that is being conducted on agritechniques has to reach the farmers. This is the only survival of ism, on which millions of people depend, can be ensured.