The “Free Tree” of India
The neem is evergreen. It grows fast and in any kind of soil, good or bad. It can soar 25 metres high and can live for 200 to 300 years – that is if it is not cut down. It is one of the most tolerant trees. It is not scared of heat, less rainfall or even drought. The only thing about nature that is scary for a neem tree is frost in winter. There are about 20 million neem trees in India today, according to the Academy for Mountain Environics. The Academy is an organisation based in Dehradun, in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The Many Uses of Neem:
It has been used as a toothpaste and brush rolled into one. As an antiseptic, it prevents infection of wounds. Children with chicken pox and measles are bathed in water with neem leaves in it.
New born babies are bathed in water that has been boiled with neem leaves because of its medicinal and refreshing qualities.
Its fresh leaves are chewed to put an end to tension. The neem’s powdered seeds have cured many of headaches when applied on the forehead. Neem can get rid of lice. It can also be used to clean the stomach of worms.
Women in south India light lamps with neem oil to keep insects away. Seeing this quality, for hundreds of years people in rural India have used neem to protect their stored grains against insects and rodents. Others have used it to protect winter clothes from insects and books from termites.
A neem plant near your home can reduce pollution, repel mosquitoes and even lower the temperature in the hot months. This is one reason why in many places people continue to hang a neem twig on their doorways.
For thousands of years, the neem tree has been a familiar friend to the people of India. A native of India and Burma, every part of this tree, from its root to bark, leaves and seed, has been used for medicinal purposes. It has been used to cure illnesses. It has also been used for preventing infection, or repelling insects that attack grains or people, like mosquitoes.
It is very interesting that the neem’s botanical name, Azadirachtc Indica, has come from a Persian description of the tree. They called the neem azad darakht-i-Hindil, which literally meant “the free tree of India”.
The greedy company
The story of neem took an interesting twist some years ago. An American company announced that it had made a fungicide out of neem seeds. A fungicide has the power to kill fungus that infects plants and destroys them.
The company then decided that it wanted to be the only company to make this product. So it applied for a patent. A patent is an official document which recognises that a person or company has indeed created or invented a new product. Thus the person or company has the sole right to make and sell that product.
It was very strange. An American company was trying to make sure that the “free tree” became its slave. The company filed an application for a patent on the neem fungicide at the European Patent Office at Munich in Germany.
Victory at last
It took some time for the government of India to get into action. And then, scientists started collecting proof of the fact that Indians have used neem seeds as a fungicide for thousands of years. And this knowledge has been available for anyone and everyone.
The case took a long time. The good news came last week and the newspapers wrote about it on their front pages. The European Patent Office had rejected the claim of the American company that it had created a new fungicide from new seeds.
The four-member panel of judges also had a name for the action of the US company. They called it bio-piracy. What it meant was that the company had tried to steal people’s knowledge of plants for its own profit by pretending that it was the company’s own creation.
What is bio-piracy?
In the countries of Asia and Africa, people still have a very valuable collection of knowledge about trees and plants and their medicinal qualities. Most of the forests that have these trees are also to be found in these continents. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation. And its benefits have been shared by all.
For some time now, Western countries have been wanting to make full use of this knowledge for their own profit. And they have been trying to get patents by claiming that they have made something new!
Foreign companies from America, Japan, Canada, Germany and England have tried to patent almost 100 Indian plants, including the karela, or bitter gourd. They have patented the common weed Gokhru. The flour of Gokhru is the poor man’s food.
Companies from these countries have even got patents for products from wild trees such as Arjun. In rural areas, the Arjun is used for making agricultural tools as well as carts. The dried fruit of the Harra tree has been a favourite Grandma’s cure for stomach problems. That too has been patented by a foreign company.
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