Kerala - Pathanamthitta   

Project to promote cultivation of herbs

Radhakrishnan Kuttoor

Aranmula, Kumbalanghi chosen for Endogenous Tourism Project

HOME REMEDIES: Medicinal plants stocked at the NSS Ayruveda Hospital in Aranmula for free distribution to households as part of the UNDP-GOI-sponsored Endogenous Tourism Project.

PATHANAMTHITTA: Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district and Kumbalangi in Ernakulam have been selected for the two-year Endogenous Tourism Project (ETP), jointly sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of India. Under it, each household in the two places would have a herbal garden.

The UNDP-GOI project aims to promote and preserve local culture and craft-based eco-tourism for sustainable rural livelihood. District Collector Rabeendra Kumar Agarwal is the nodal officer and executive director of the State-run Vasthu Vidya Gurukulam. P.N. Suresh is the implementing officer of the project.

Mr. Agarwal told The Hindu that the main objective of the project was to facilitate capacity building, and thereby enable low-income village communities create and articulate their skills from within and support innovative and promising rural tourism initiatives.

The Community Ayurvedic Training Centre is one of the seven schemes to be implemented in Aranmula as part of the project, he said.

During his visit to Kerala, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had stressed the need to promote medicinal plant cultivation and pharmaceutical industry as part of his 10-point development agenda for the State.

According to Mr. Suresh, the Rehabilitation Plantation Limited in Punalur has donated 11,300 medicinal plant saplings belonging to nine species to the Vasthu Vidya Gurukulam, which has been identified as an implementing agency of the UNDP project, for free distribution in Aranmula.

Mr. Suresh said the saplings would be distributed through the NSS Ayurvedic Hospital in Aranmula, which is the ETP resource centre that provides guidance on the cultivation and use of these plants to the local people.

According to Dr. B.Harikumar, resource person, the medicinal plants to be distributed to local households from Friday are Punica Granatum (Mathalanarakom), Tricopus Zeylanicus (Arogyappacha), Emblica Officinalis (Nelli), Asparagus Racemosus (Sataveri), Acasia Catechu (Karingali), Cessalpinia Sappan (Patimukhom), Becopa Monnieri (Brahmi), Kaempferia Galanga (Kacholom) and Curucuma Aromatica (Kasturi-manjal).

A pamphlet detailing the planting method and medicinal value value of each plant with its therapeutic use as a home remedy would also be distributed to the local people, said Dr. Harikumar.

Herbal garden

Mr. Suresh said `a herbal garden in every house' was the slogan of the project and more saplings would be distributed in the next two years.

Promotion of mud technology, environment-friendly construction methods and Vastuvidya, art appreciation and training programmes, mural painting workshops and promotion of the ancient metallurgy of the unique Aranmula Kannadi (metal mirror) are the other schemes being included in the two-year UNDP-GOI project.

The Collector said the ETP would be implemented in two parts of `hardware' that involved basic infrastructure development and `software,' which provides training and other rural tourism-related activities.

He said Rs.50 lakhs had been earmarked for implementing the `hardware' part and Rs.20 lakhs for the `software.'

The hardware schemes would be implemented by the local grama panchayat, Travancore Devaswom Board, Pampa Parirakshana Samiti and Palliyoda Seva Sanghom, which organises the famous Aranmula Vallamkali (snakeboat pageantry) while the Vasthu Vidya Gurukulam would implement the software schemes, Mr Agarwal said.

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