Anil K Gupta

Pradeep K Singh, Ketki Desai

Riya Sinha, Vijaya Sherry Chand
Kirit K Patel, Shailesh Shukla, Joona Sheel
Sanjay Goswami, Sudhirendar Sharma

D T Padekar, Palash Graphics, Unnikrishnan Satpal Chabra

R P S Yadav, R Baskaran, Bala G Mudaliar Kajal Shah, Nisha Antony

Honey Bee

C/o Prof Anil K Gupta
Indian Institute of Management
Vastrapur, Ahmedabad 380 015 India

Tel : 91-79-6307241

Fax : 91-79-6307341

honeybee@sristi.org

anilg@sristi.org

http://www.sristi.org

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Carrera 43 No. 10-50 Apto. 502

Telefono: 336 8531 Cali, Valle, Colombia

Dr T N Prakash

Dept of Agri Economics, University of Agri. Sci., GKVK Bangalore, Karnataka - 560065 India

Dilip Koradiya, SRISTI P O Box 15050

Ahmedabad, Gujarat - 380 015 India

Dr. A. Chandan, ERA, Khundian

District Kangra, Himachal Pradesh 176030 India

P Vivekanandan, 45, TPM Nagar, Virattipathu

Tamil Nadu 625 010 India

Shalini Sharma, H-12 ODS Flats Lajpat Nager 4

New Delhi 110024 India

Prof (Mrs) P Geervani

The voice of grassroots innovators, conservators of biodiversity and associated knowledge systems and other traditional knowledge experts is often not heard while framing policies at national and international levels. This is not new. However, when there are pressures from organised sector to deny the local knowledge experts even little space to articulate and assert their creativity and knowledge rights, then there arises a need to stir the conscience of civil society. The organised herbal industry and ayurvedic product industry recently protested against the biological diversity bill No. 93 of 2000 as introduced in Lok Sabha, Lower House of Indian Parliament. The provision which caused them discomfort dealt with the requirement for every international applicant to take prior approval of the National Biodiversity Authority before obtaining any biological resources or associated knowledge occurring in India. The industry feels that this provision of the Bill will cripple the entire industry. They apprehend that all non-Indian customers would have to take prior approval from the National Biodiversity Authority before being able to purchase any of their products. The industry feels uncomfortable about the obligation to pay royalty/cess/fee to the National Biodiversity Fund ‘every time they wish to export any of their products.’ Certainly, the biological resources which are not collected from the wild and are not threatened can be excluded from the purview of this clause. Further, government can declare other biological resources available abundantly also out of the purview of prior approval. But, for the rest of the resources, why should extraction be allowed without ensuring compliance with provision of section 24. It authorizes the state biodiversity board to prohibit or restrict any activity in consultation with local bodies, which is considered, "detrimental or contrary to the objectives of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity or equitable sharing of benefits arising out of such activity."

Should one have a law, which allows unrestrained exploitation of natural resources without any concern for the long term sustainability and also the rights of other wildlife living in the forest. Isn’t it true that long term sustainability of extraction is in the interest of business itself? Are there many examples where the private or public ayurvedic or herbal industry has contributed to the conservation, restoration and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity? The issue of benefit sharing is even more complicated except for the example of TBGRI and Arya Vaidya Shala. We do not have many cases in which organised corporate sector has bothered about providing any incentives to local communities to conserve biodiversity. Likewise, no incentives have ever been provided by the private or public sector to local healers or herbalists so far. It is well known that some of poorest people of the country live in the biodiversity rich region.

We do want herbal industry to grow and become multinational. We are very much interested in generating global demand for our herbal products. However, this cannot be done by exploiting nature irresponsibly nor by exploiting people unfairly. To give an illustration about how Indian industry fares globally with regard to intellectual property protection of herbal products, let me refer to a study I pursued at IIM-A. It was found that about forty five per cent of the patents were owned by Chinese, twenty two per cent by Japanese, sixteen per cent by Russian and not even a fraction of a per cent by Indians. So much about the inventiveness and creativity of our industry. However, nothing is lost as yet. We can still achieve global eminence in this field provided we make local communities and individual healers partners in our pursuit of global leadership.

	Anil K Gupta