Rooted Out
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India may be paying dearly for the world’s fascination with ayurveda, which has boosted the demand for herbal medication. The Union health ministry has in a recent assessment deemed over 300 species of medicinal herbs and plants threatened by the overexploitation that feeds the ayurveda industry in India and abroad.
As expected, the list includes the herbal ingredients of popular ayurvedic preparations that are often consumed without the vaidya’s advice: the Sita ashoka (Saraca asoca), the chief constituent of ashokarishta, used for gynaecological disorders; guggal (Commiphora wightii), a thorny bush that yields a gum-resin used in over 100 preparations; all ten herbs used in dashamoolarishta, meant to “strengthen” the nervous and cardiac systems but used as a general tonic. “Guggal is virtually extinct in India. For the last few years, we have been getting it from Afghanistan,” says Prof S.S. Handa, an expert on ayurveda and former chairman of a task force of the department of biotechnology.
Replantation efforts have begun in earnest. The National Medicinal Plants Board has sanctioned conservation and plantation of guggal over 4,000 hectares of forest land in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Sita ashoka is being grown on 800 hectares in Karnataka, Orissa and Kerala. And the plants that go into dashamoolarishta are being grown on some 1,100 hectares in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh.
Begonia Tessaricarpa
Experts say assessments conducted earlier in different states had already pointed to the danger. The ministry’s report lists 359 plant species, of which 335 are on a “red list”, which includes categories such as “endangered”, “critically endangered”, “vulnerable” and “near-threatened”. Fifteen plants are deemed “severely threatened”. It’s a vocabulary of alarm. Handa says the government is taking some measures, but the key is to involve the ayurvedic medicine industry. Few farmers care to cultivate medicinal plants, but linking them up with the industry and negotiating good prices could change this.
Over the last decade, some plants have been relocated for cultivation. For example, Utleria salicifolia and Hydnocarpus pentandra, native to the Western Ghats, are being grown in new locales in the same region; Gymnocladus assamicus and Begonia tessaricarpa, rare medicinal herbs native to Arunachal Pradesh, are being successfully grown in Sikkim, which has similar soil and climes.
The National Medicinal Plants Board, constituted in November 2000, has done its bit. In 2001, it initiated a damage control plan—revised in 2008—called the Central Sector Scheme for Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants. Forest departments of various states have been granted assistance under the scheme. Projects for setting up 29 medicinal plants conservation areas (MPCAS) have also been implemented. In addition, 24 states have been covered under a new, Rs 630-crore National Mission on Medicinal Plants.
A special drive has also been launched to conserve and propagate high-altitude plants like Atees, Kuth and Kutki through NGOs working at the grassroots in the Himalayan regions. The ministry has also initiated some awareness programmes, such as herb gardens.
All this may take time—and more widespread effort—to take effect. Happily, a beginning has been made.
