Hello all, the third quarter of the year is usually overwhelmed by festivals of varied faith, purpose, and expectations. This is a time when celebration, happiness, and enjoyment overcome our daily struggle for existence. In contrast, this is also a time when environmental pollution reaches its peak on all fronts due to uncontrolled and superfluous resource use and wastage. The problem is well known and is addressed at different levels, even though we have set varied restrictions on noise pollution, water pollution, and non-degradable material use. Unfortunately, environmental consciousness is still a distant dream for our society. We are conducting seminars, celebrating ‘World Environment Day’, and preaching the young ones to be green warriors. But at the same we feel uneasy without air conditioning even on a normal not-so-hot day, preferring cheap plastic for domestic purposes, and are too rigid to change our habits in the name of tradition or n-number of reasons. The social-political-economic nexus stimulates this environmental chaos. How do we expect a clean and green world without addressing this hypocrisy? Administration, legislation, or penalty alone is not sufficient enough to tackle this problem unless we citizens act responsibly.
This issue brings out two articles from different regions with the same theme of livelihood. The Sal tree-mediated life of the tribals from southwestern West Bengal is penned down for our readers. Shorea robusta (Sal), the mighty tree belonging to the Dipterocarpaceae family, is the backbone of the non-timber forest product economy (NTFP economy) across the Central Indian Plateau. The authors describe how the villagers from the Bankura district make their livelihood from the Sal tree, the painstaking work of collection of leaves, sorting and grading, handmade leaf plate and cup preparation, storage, and trading. While reading, sensitive readers can feel the interplay of labor, competition, market pressure, and exploitation hidden within this simple article.
Livelihood has a different meaning for people from the coastal area. Sundarban, situated in the mouth of the Gangetic Delta, is equally famous for the Royal Bengal Tiger and Mangrove ecosystem. People living there have to face different environmental challenges like salinity, frequent destructive storms, limitation of available land, etc. In this context, an ex-banker describes his working experience with the farmers in this area intending to develop a sustainable living strategy for them. This short story is one of those countless small but effective initiatives taken by the common man to tradeoff between conservation and livelihood.
The wild food section flaunted by flat-seeded Abutilon, red-flowered Bombax, pink-flowered Callicarpa, and large-seeded Oroxylum. A good number of lip-smacking dishes ranging from boiled leaves to roasted seeds are available from them and are loved by both veg and non-veg foodies. Fried flower and cooling drink from Abutilon, Semal sabji from Bombax, chewing bark and flower chutney from Callicarpa, and fruit chutney from Oroxylum are a few of the locally popular cuisines.
Glimpses of nature narrate the story of rewilding in the nuclear landscape of Fukushima and Chernobyl, the whale temple cum natural history museum of Vietnam, the breakthrough story of the seeds of organic cotton variety and Gharats, the traditional watermills of the Himalayan hills. These stories reflect – the natural dynamics, cultural practice, and traditional wisdom – myriad of ways to utilize natural resources.
Happy reading
