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Language: English
From the preface:
"Oriental society and civilization is few thousand years old; naturally, the society particularly through the services of its talented persons like sages, vaidyas (ancient doctors) and philosophers of different time periods, has adopted the use of various materials (including both living and non-living); different processes (for performing different essential day to day work); or occasional social practices. Ultimately, through trial and error and subsequent observations, the best among them have formed an integral part of the life style of society.
Those nations that have documented their age-old knowledge, and enriched it with their subsequent additions of observation and innovation, have advanced rapidly, particularly in science. Thus, the entirety of Europe, though they started far later than the Orient, is now enormously ahead of us, resulting in a high standard of life. Sadly, this aspect, the documentation, has always been neglected in India and most Afro-Asian countries. Even to write our own history, we are to depend on documents of Megasthenes, Marco Polo or Xuanzang. Without recording and with rapid development and changes in society, there remains every risk of losing this potential of knowledge and thus for every future plan of research and development, we may have to start from scratch, resulting not only in wasted time, money and labor, but also at the risk of lagging behind.
In reality, the problem is that science is currently showing fantastic and spectacular development in most of its heavy and flamboyant branches like electronics, nuclear physics, space science, genetic engineering, molecular biology, nano-technology etc. Besides them, people are not ready to remember or even to recognize the other major aspect i.e., ‘documentation’ of old experiences, though that is equally important, and no less essential.
The necessity of this seminar on Traditional Knowledge and Social Practices Promoting Biodiversity Conservation was fortunately felt by the following four organizations and actually organized by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), in collaboration with the Social Environmental and Biological Association (SEBA), West Bengal Biodiversity Board (WBBB), and the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission Institute of Advanced Studies (RKVMIAS). They have volunteered and sponsored the arrangement. As a result, a good number of papers on traditional knowledge and social practices could be recorded in these proceedings. But actually many similar seminars should be held, at different corners of the country viz. universities and research laboratories and be documented to encourage patenting intellectual property rights and preventing piracy of traditional knowledge on biodiversity and bioresources of India."
I. Traditional knowledge
1. Traditional knowledge regarding oral hygiene of rural people of Purulia District in West Bengal/Biplob Kumar Modak and Saugata Basu
2. Traditional knowledge on medicinal uses of plants by the tribal people of Birbhum District, West Bengal, India/Uday Das and Chowdhury Habibur Rahaman
3. Traditional knowledge of fishermen communities of Sundarban, West Bengal/S.K. Pramanik and N.C. Nandi
4. Traditional management practices for aquaculture in East Kolkata Wetlands, West Bengal/Sayanee Saha
5. Indigenous knowledge on nomenclature of freshwater wetlands of West Bengal/N.C. Nandi and Mousumi Roy
6. Patenting of traditional knowledge/Lakshmi Ganesan
7. Farmer’s folk knowledge on multiple use system of freshwater wetlands of West Bengal/N.C. Nandi and A.K. Das
8. Indigenous hill farming systems supporting biodiversity conservation in northeast India/T.K. Pal and Jhikmik Dasgupta
9. Plants and animals of ethnomedicinal values of Singbhum plateau, Jharkhand, India/Shilpi Kumari and M.C. Mahata
10. Medicinal uses of some epiphytic plants used by santal and other tribes of Kaptipada (Udala) subdivision in Mayurbhanj District, Odisha, India/Kalpana Mohanta and M.C. Mahata
11. Ethnomedicinal plants of Bankura District, West Bengal/Sayani Biswas and Ambarish Mukherjee
12. Some medicinal plants as documented from tribal dominated areas of Ayodhya hills (Purulia: West Bengal) and vicinity/Soma Chanda and Ambarish Mukherjee
13. Common folkloric medicinal practices among Kora-mudi tribes of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal/Priyanka Halder (Mallick) Subasish Mukherjee and Manojit Bhattacharya
14. Ethnomedicinal uses of plants by the tribal and nontribal people of Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum District, West Bengal/Sathi Saha, Suman Kalyan Mandal and Chowdhury Habibur Rahaman
15. Phytoresources as documented from Garkella Kherobari and Gourangapur Forest areas under Durgapur Forest Range, Burdwan District, West Bengal/Tripti Bouri and Ambarish Mukherjee
16. Crustacean bioresources of ethnomedicinal value/M.K. Dev Roy
17. Ethnomedicinal usage of animals as drugs among the tribals of Sundarban, West Bengal, India/Anirudha Dey
18. Biodiversity as recorded from indigenous societies of Nabagram Gram Panchayat area, Burdwan District, West Bengal/Anasua Roy, Siuli Batabyal, Sayantan Mukherjee and Papiya Ghosh.
II. Social Practices
19. Concept of biodiversity conservation in Indian religions/A. Mohapatra
20. Traditional nature-based culture and forest festivals of Chhotanagpur plateau areas, India/Archana Banerjee
21. Conservation of plant species through age-old religious and social practices in southern West Bengal/Amalendu Chatterjee and Ratna Chatterjee (Sharma)
22. Plant and animal species worshipped in traditional festivals of Jharkhand plateau, India/M.C. Mahata and Kalpana Mohanta
23. Pakshitirtham pilgrimage and concern for conservation of birds/R.S. Murthy and Rituparna Nandi
24. Social practices required for sparrow conservation/Nirmala Tripathi and Rittika Pandey
25. People’s role on conservation of nesting habitat of meropid birds in sandy river bank soil/Debkumar Datta and Hiranmay Saha
26. People’s role in maintaining microorganisms in a metropolitan canal/Debkumar Datta and Sudip Chakraborty
27. Worship of Euphorbia neriifolia Linn. (Family: Euphorbiaceae) in Hooghly and Howrah districts of West Bengal/Saugata Basu and Biplob Kumar Modak
28. Elephant rejuvenation programme of Guruvyur temple trust, Kerala/Bindu L. and Shaji C
29. Study of biodiversity of Nabastha I Gram Panchayat, Burdwan District, West Bengal and its conservational perspectives through local rituals and cultural implications/Papiya Ghosh, Ambarish Mukherjee and Goutam Chandra
30. Human beings as one of the factor for survival of larger mammals in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan/P.L. Kankane
