India:
Sisters in conflict
By Swapna Majumdar
Ghulam Mustafa was
tending to his small grocery shop in
Baramulla, Kashmir, when he was picked up for
questioning by the security forces. There was
nothing to worry about, his family was told. He
would be let off after some routine questioning.
Ten years have passed since then but there has
been no news of Mustafa. It is as if he has
vanished into thin air.
Neither the state
government nor the security forces have any
answers to questions about his disappearance.
What happened to his wife and seven children? How
did they cope with the trauma and stress of not
knowing whether Mustafa was alive or dead?
It was these
questions and the fact that there were thousands
of similar cases that prompted Oxfam India Trust,
a non-governmental organisation (NGO), to study
the impact of violence and conflict on women and,
if possible, to strategise interventions to help
them.
In the first such
initiative, women caught in the ongoing conflict
in Kashmir and the North-Eastern states recently
met under the aegis of the project to share their
experiences. "Women in these states have
been living with conflict for a long time. The
objective of bringing them together was two-fold.
Firstly, we thought it would help us to
understand their problems better and secondly, we
wanted to see whether sharing experiences would
help these women as well," explains Oxfam
consultant Urvashi Butalia. "It was amazing
how they opened up to each other despite their
social and cultural differences. It was as if
they suddenly realised that they were not alone
in their sorrow and that there were other women
facing similar trauma."
During the course
of the two-day meeting, women from the
North-Eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur and
Assam discovered that although the women from the
Baramulla, Srinagar and Ganderbal (three
districts of Kashmir), came from different
social, cultural and religious milieus, it was as
if their stories had been scripted by the same
pen. Not only did the women in both regions live
in constant fear of attacks from both militants
and security forces, but the disappearance of the
men was usually followed by sexual harassment and
rape.
According to
Rashmi Goswami of the North East Network, an NGO
working with the women in the region, the number
of rape cases in the area had increased since the
conflict. "In fact, if statistics are
compared between Punjab and the North-East during
the period of conflict in both the states, the
cases of rape are higher in North-East. This
indicates the extent of violation women are
suffering in the region. Yet, it has not stirred
the state governments out of their indifference.
Therefore, the women have learnt that they have
to organise themselves to ensure some kind of
protection," she contends.
Unlike their
North-Eastern counterparts, the Kashmiri women
have not been able to form any kind of self-help
groups. "This is primarily because Kashmir
does not have any history of a women's movement.
So it's a big step for them to even step out of
their homes and travel to another city,"
points out woman activist Sahba Hussain. As a
consultant to Oxfam for this project, Hussain who
is studying the psychological impact of women in
conflict, feels that more than forming groups,
Kashmiri women have to learn to overcome their
fear.
Hussain conducted
four trauma-counselling workshops in the Kashmir
Valley to support women suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosomatic
illness that have a serious and wide-ranging
impact on their health. "It was felt that
this kind of exposure would help the women. They
could learn from other women, particularly those
from the North-East on how they had coped and
worked out strategies to overcome their
fear," she says.
Hussain was right.
The Kashmiri women were so inspired by the
spirited determination shown by the North-Eastern
women that they want to emulate them. They have
invited them to come to Kashmir to teach them to
organise themselves. The Oxfam consultants are
working out the modalities of such a visit. If
and when this happens, it will indeed be a big
step forward. But until then, Butalia and Hussain
say that the project will continue to build
supportive public opinion and awareness. Only
then can they pressurise the state governments to
come out with the truth. [WFS]
Deforestation
: destroying medicinal plants
By Suraj Saraf
There
is virtue in the open, There is healing out of
doors,
The Great Physicial makes His Round along the
forest floor Bliss Carman
More pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner
air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams,
These waters, rolling from their mountain
springs, With a soft inland murmur.
Thus wrote poets Bliss Carman and William
Wordsworth.
It
was, therefore, in the fitness of things that the
Rio Earth Summit declaration on environment had
in the very first principle highlighted : ''Human
beings are at the centre of concern for
sustainable development. They are entitled to a
healthy and productive life in harmony with
nature.''
It is, no doubt,
''the pellucid streams, ampler ether, diviner
air'' buttressed by the enchanted ambience sans
pollution, that uplift the spirit and put one in
communion with the ''Great Physician that makes
His round along the forest floor.''
Forests are
conducive to the health of the mankind in
numerous ways, but a crucial factor that
environmentalists were not stressing on is the
importance of herbs or medicinal plants found in
forests. Not only that they make the general
atmosphere of the wilds relaxing and buoyant, but
also yield a virtually unending treasure trove of
valuable drugs.
However, with the
growing loss of biodiversity consequent upon
deforestation (world had already lost 50% of
forests by now) loss of herbal wealth also goes
on multiplying. It is obvious that the Rio
Summit, in its very first principle, linked
health with environment.
How closely human
health is linked with environment management and
economic development is reflected on a World Bank
report which said : 'Environmental problems can
and do present obstacles to development such as
situations where the benefits of rising income
are offset by the cost imposed on health and
quality of life by pollution. Many investments
aimed at protecting the environment will begin to
pay for themselves within a few years through
increased productivity by improved health and
welfare.''
It is a blunder on
the part of western researchers to suppose that
since they have learnt the trick of synthesising
certain medicinal substances, they are better
chemists than Nature that created compounds in
plants too numerous to mention. The plant world
literally bristles with hundreds of remedial
agents, even the life saving ones. In fact, some
of these Nature's secrets seemed so fantastic
that scientists had at first ignored them. Nature
hides unlimited therapeutics in the roots, stems,
barks, flowers, fruits, seeds of plants and
trees. Many of them also aver that some of the
important synthetic drugs are only improvements
on what nature had already provided in plants.
Herbs undoubtedly
provide blueprints for thousands of medicinal
substances that a chemist may synthesise. In the
chain of synthesising a drug, at first plant
explorers search for promising plants; then a
valuable extract is produced and the chemist
takes over, they juggle and shuffle the molecules
and come up with a variety of derivatives of
natural products.
The point to
stress here is that in the chain of processes
resulting even in a synthetic drug, the first and
foremost step is to locate ''promising plants''
and they are invariably found in forests about
which the first information comes from tribals
living in or about the forests.
However, greedy
persons are playing havoc with the natural
klendyke of highly beneficial therapeutics. It is
the micro soil and climatic conditions in the
peculiar forest habitat that aid the wonderful
chemical reactions in the plants to produce
medicinal alkaloids (active agents), including
the rare ones. In felling the trees in forests,
wild plants under them, including herbal plants,
get destroyed never to grow again unless the same
habitat is provided again.
The winner of
''Vriksha Mitra'' award some years back, Sona
Ullah Banihali, had told this writer that when
Banihal mountains (part of Pir Panjal range and
last tract in Jammu region before crossing over
to Kashmir valley through Jawahar tunnel) got
largely deforested, numerous valuable small
plants, which mostly were of medicinal value, had
disappeared over some time. But when his efforts
for years succeeded in re-forestation of the
area, these medicinal plants had started growing
again though no specific efforts were made for
that purpose.
A national seminar
in India in late 1994, had, inter alia,
underpinned that the rich diversity of medicinal
plants and associated traditional knowledge lay
at the base of indigenous healthcare in India
that still served over 70% of the country's
population. To ensure that large populations
continued to receive this service it would be
essential to conserve the biodiversity of
medicinal, plants and upgrade the associated
systems of treatment, the seminar had stressed.
However, mankind
has still not understood the extent of the
dangerous consequences of the fast deteriorating
condition of life-supporting system. It does not
need much emphasis that environment forests and
food production are closely lined. In the
production of plant nutrients, essential for
growth, micro organisms play an important role.
They are universally present in the soil, water
and atmosphere, and mobilise or immobilise the
nutrients in soil and water. Nitrogen, phosphate
and potash present or introduced into the soil
are mediated by the microbial action either to
release them from insoluble into soluble forms or
to bind them in the soil to prevent their loss
through leaching or erosion, or by
physico-chemical and biological processes. Carbon
or nitrogen cycles, aided by microbes are
significant for evolution, biospheric changes and
in environmental complexities.
It is, therefore,
pertinent that the UN experts have asserted
overfelling of trees might forever destroy plants
which may help people combat even the most
dreaded diseases like cancer and AIDS. One must
also seriously heed the warning by the World
Watch study underscoring that bio-diversity is no
luxury but a dire necessity.
But what are we
doing in India? Subjecting biodiversity to
merciless squandering oblivious of the
consequences. Degraded forests, dwindling
wildlife and rising pollution levels, all point
to the need for urgent corrective measures, says
a study two years ago by Tata Energy Research
Institute. The availability of fresh water during
the last fifty years had declined by two-thirds
and the area covered by soil degradation had
increased by about eight lakh hectares, the study
observes.
The actual total
area under forest cover available now is less
than 12% against the minimum required 33%.
Besides, the afforestation drive is dismal.
With this
disappointing show regarding the health of the
forests in India, where will be the room left for
the 'Great Physician' to make His rounds, even
though India had a proud record since hoary past
in use of medicinal plants from forests which are
now becoming a rage the world over.
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