The Indian government recently finished a massive database that puts thousands of years’ worth of traditional Indian remedies, medicines, and practices in the public domain—and, hopefully, out of reach of Western biotech companies attempting to patent this knowledge. The Ecologist reports that this huge repository of information, dubbed the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, was completed by 200 researchers who spent 8 years transcribing and translating ancient texts on Ayurveda, Unani, and siddha. They’re also working to include yoga poses, which have come under patent-attack by many Western yoga instructors as the practice has grown more popular.

“India has effectively made its store of wisdom public property,” the Ecologist notes, “which can now be accessed and used by anyone, but patented by no one.”

Sources: The Ecologist, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library 

Image by zoyachubby, licensed under Creative Commons.

The Kashmir region between India and Pakistan is known more for religious and political strife than it is for symbols of peace, and there’s good reason for that. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the area is being threatened once again by bombings, allegedly by Islamic terrorists, that could inflame historical tensions between Pakistan and India.

Deep in that violence-plagued region , the Amarnath Cave represents both the problems and the hope for the Kashmir region, according Peter Manseau, writing for the newly founded Search magazine. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus make the arduous pilgrimage to the Amarnath Cave in southern Kashmir every year to visit an icy shrine to the Hindu deity Shiva. Legends say that the shrine was discovered by a Muslim shepherd, who showed the cave to a Hindu priest, who immediately recognized it as a holy place.

Today, the symbol of interfaith cooperation is being threatened, not only by the violence that seems endemic to the entire region, but also by climate change. With average temperatures on the rise, and throngs of people packing into the cave, Manseau reports that the ice shrine has begun to melt earlier each year. Many pilgrims haven’t been able to see the object of their journey at all, and instead have been shown crudely packed snow in its place.

For Manseau, the Amarnath Cave represents both the good and bad in the Kashmir region: The interfaith cooperation and the religious strife, the importance of symbols to human faith and the lengths people will go to protect them. “Holy ground reminds us of all we hope for,” Manseau writes, “and all that might be lost.”

Developing nations will soon benefit from personal stoves that combine energy efficiency and sustainable business models. Triple Pundit highlights efforts by EnviroFit and the Shell Foundation to distribute clean-burning biomass stoves in India.

EnviroFit, a Colorado-based nonprofit manufacturer, first became known for retrofitting two-stroke engines in Southeast Asia. Its stoves are designed to harness the power of “wood, crop waste, or animal dung” and produce nontoxic exhaust. This is valuable to India and other developing countries, where toxic indoor air pollution claims millions of lives every year. EnviroFit and Shell hope to subsidize the $12 to $50 cost of the stoves for families in need and eventually expand the program to Latin America and Africa.

Biomass stoves are part of an alternative-cooking trend that harnesses old technologies in new ways. Utne blogger Erik Helin pointed me to a spread in BackHome (article not available online) featuring the latest solar cooking technology, ranging from expensive high-tech cookers to do-it-yourself contraptions made from windshield shades and other materials. We’ve come a long way from the lukewarm hot dogs yielded up by the tin-foil-and-shoebox cookers my sixth-grade science class constructed.

Major media outlets have been humming about Tata Motors’ new $2,500 car, the Nano, which is expected to speed into mass production in India later this year. While many in the West were previously unfamiliar with Tata, an informative profile in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki reports that the $30 billion conglomerate has been sparking India’s industrial sector since the 19th century. However, it is the company’s impossibly cheap car that has prompted worldwide media attention, fueling fears about the potential environmental impact of putting automobile ownership within reach of a market containing more than a billion people.

Gavin Rabinowitz of the Associated Press sounded the eco-alarm in a story picked up by USA Today, ABC News, and many other news outlets. Somini Sengupta of the New York Times noted these environmental concerns and added that because India lacks a driving culture like that in the United States, wacky high jinks, like dodging elephants in the road, might also ensue.

As Gwynne Dyer points out in the Toronto weekly Now, such hysteria is hypocritical, given that cars in the United States and Canada are more environmentally onerous since they are larger and far more numerous.

Dyer writes, “Clucking disapprovingly about mass car ownership in India or China misses the point entirely. At the moment, there are only 11 private cars for every thousand Indians. There are 477 cars for every thousand Americans.” Dyers proposes we adopt a “contraction and convergence” model like the one pioneered by Aubrey Meyer, whereby developed and developing countries agree on a future meeting point for their emissions.

—Jason Ericson

Indian women are donning pink saris, grabbing sticks, and cracking heads for human rights. A group known as the Gulabi Gang (gulabi means pink in Hindi) has decided to fight for human rights, literally. The all-female, pink-clad vigilante force is exposing corruption in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest regions. They target men who beat or blackmail their wives by attacking the men with sticks. Soutik Biswas of the BBC News spoke with Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of the gang. "Mind you," she says, "we are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice."

—Brendan Mackie