Govt Sanctions Over Rs 860 Lakh to Study Tribal Medicinal Practices Across Country

According to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which briefed the Lok Sabha on March 20, the Union government has sanctioned over Rs 864 lakh to various institutes, universities, and academies for research into the medicinal practices and healing traditions of tribal tribes across the country.

The second largest chunk of this funding has gone to the Pravara Institute of Medical Science, Loni, Uttar Pradesh, which is supposed to be using the Rs 195 lakh allocation for a "Survey for Identification, Enlisting of Traditional Tribal Healers, Study, Documentation and testing of Tribal Health Traditions, Tribal Medicine (Healing Practices and Ethno-Medicine) of different Tribal Communities in State of Maharashtra".

Some of the projects funded by the Patanjali Research Institute (PRI) include the collection of ethno-medicinal information from traditional healers, the documentation of medicinal information of plants using a research review approach, the collection, herbarium preparation, and identification of plants from various tribal regions.

In addition to this, the government said the PRI was allotted monies to work on preparing a herbal monograph of selected therapeutic plants, profile of these plants, and "direction, coordination and training of tribal traditional healers."

Several of the programmes for which the PRI is spending the cash appear to have no connection to the research of tribal medicines or tribal healing traditions. "Demographic and Socio-economic Information of Tribal Community through Digital Support with Geo-tagging; Survey of Government Schemes and their actual beneficiaries' details; Documentation of different works of Tribal Artisans; Livelihood support system to tribal communities through beekeeping, agriculture, and traditional arts; E-commerce platform and Web-portal for Livelihood Support."

Aside from that, funding for research in this sector has gone to institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jodhpur, the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in Guwahati, the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Science (CCRAS) and the Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH) in New Delhi, and Tribal Research Institutes (TRI) in a number of States and Union Territories.

While the CCRH is working on a pilot project to incorporate homoeopathy and yoga into the National Programme for the Prevention of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Stroke (NPCDCS) in two tribal districts (Sambalpur, Odisha and Nasik, Maharashtra), AIIMS in Jodhpur is researching the epistemology of indigenous knowledge and healing practices in Sirohi, Rajasthan.

Many TRIs are also engaged on initiatives to chronicle tribal populations' traditional healing techniques in Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and other states. Kerala, for example, is working on a project to document the knowledge of 300 tribal healers, while AIIMS, Bhopal is researching the "ethno-botanical role of medicinal plants" utilised by the state's local tribespeople.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has approved some of these projects through the Tribal Festival Research, Information, Education, Communication, and Events (TRI-ECE) scheme. Others have been approved through the 'Support to TRIs scheme' and the Ministry of Ayush, according to the government.