Dear Friends,
Last December on a visit to a village in Pune (State of Maharashtra) in India, I found all along both sides of the highway, in front of small trestle tables women selling organically home grown turmeric powder an essential ingredient in Indian cooking. It also has great anti-septic properties, and has been patented by the Indian government as an Indian commodity, where it is used for cosmetics and medicinal ointments. I stopped to buy the neatly packaged turmeric powder , which grows from a rhizome, and is easily grown ina small patch of earth.
This is truly a sustainable income generating activity, which probably many rural womendo have access to, but needs promotion for marketing. In South India similarly, the Tamarind Tree that yields another sour, tangy fruit whose pulp extract is extensively used in Indian cuisine, grows profusely along highways as Avenue trees as it provides a large leafy canopy that provides shade in the scorching heat of summer, is also used to market its product. However this occupation of picking and processing it is taken over by government contractors and middlemen. If this could be given over to women in the rural areas after it has been picked from the trees, the labour that is involved in shelling the raw fruit and then drying it in the sun after de-seeding it, can be a sole women's activity. It would gain a big income for them.
Our country has a great source of products from forests and its bio-diversity of trees and plants which are very often medicinal in its content. If rural and tribal women whose knowledge of these trees and plants is handed down to them from generation to generation, what a great boost to their lives.
Gomathy Venkateswar.
Member on IFUW Committee on Fellowships.
Member on the Project Grants Committee of the VGIF.
Member of Soroptimist International of South Kolkata.
INDIA
Gomathy Venkateswar