Kerala tribe to get fiscal boost for sharing wonder energy plant

In the thickly-forested hills of the Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve in the Western Ghats between Kerala and Tamil Nadu grows a wonder plant. Scientific studies have confirmed that the seeds and the leaves of the plant, locally known as ‘Arogyapacha’, have an exceptional ability to relieve fatigue and stress, enhance immunity, protect the liver and even repair damaged DNA.

The Kani tribals, who live in small hamlets around these hills, have long known of these properties, but soon they could be sharing it with the world — yet again. An agreement has been drafted, involving the Kani tribals, a state public sector pharmaceuticals manufacturer named Oushadhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (JNTBGRI) which made the formulation for the medicine called ‘Jeevanioushadhi’ from Arogyapacha.

Another signatory to the agreement is the Kerala Forest Department, which has legal jurisdiction over these areas. The department is now conducting a survey to map the prevalence of the plant.

As per the agreement, the Kanis will cultivate the endangered plant endemic to this area near their hamlets, and sell it to Oushadhi for Rs 500 per kg. They will also get two per cent royalty on the sale of each pack of Jeevanioushadi, says S Rajasekaran, Senior Scientist, JNTBGRI.

This is in line with a unique arrangement well known in intellectual property rights research papers as the ‘JNTBGRI-Kani benefit-sharing’ model. “There has been no other known instance of tribals given a share of profits for their medicinal knowledge,” says P Pushpangadan, former director of JNTBGRI, who was responsible for bringing the Arogyapacha to light. 

It was in the late-80s when Pushpangadan was leading the All-India Coordinated Research Project on Ethnobiology, a programme to identify the many medicinal plants used across India, and their uses. 

In the Agasthya Hills, Pushpangadan had found that the Kani tribals would chew on a fruit whenever they got tired. On being asked, the tribals, with great reluctance, revealed the secret of their energy. Pushpangadan got the plant tested in laboratories, applied for a patent and formulated a herbal medicine.

In 1994, the medicine was licensed out to Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, a Coimbatore-based manufacturer, and a model was worked out for part of the money to be shared between JNTBGRI and the Kanis.

That model was hugely beneficial to the Kanis — who number around 25,000 — live in scattered hamlets in these forests and earn a living from selling forest produce.

Rajasekaran, who has been associated with the project since the very beginning, says that the tribals formed a welfare trust to manage the funds, and used it to construct a community hall, library and rain-water harvesting tank. They also bought a jeep to ferry students to a senior school, which is 10 km away.

But that first arrangement fell through. “There was opposition to a private company being given the licence and people said that traditional tribal wisdom was being sold to the private sector,” says Anoop Kani, a Kani tribesman who’s working on a PhD on the genomics of Arogyapacha. “The forest department was not part of the agreement, so they were opposed to the endeavour. Also, the tribals, being ignorant, would pluck the entire plant, when all that was needed was the leaves. This led to a depletion in the plant’s availability,” he says. Politicians got involved, too, and criminal cases were registered against some Kani tribals for selling the leaves. All this affected their morale and they stopped collecting the leaves. Around seven years ago, Arya Vaidya Pharmacy stopped manufacturing the medicine.

“There were too many problems procuring the raw materials,” says, Vinodkumar TG Nair, a scientist with JNTBGRI.

Rajasekaran says, the draft agreement skirts around the problem by providing for the cultivation of the plant near the Kani hamlets. This will, he says, hopefully lead to an increase in the availability of Arogyapacha, whose delicate ecosystem has been further endangered by the many rubber plantations that have come up in the area in recent years, he says.