Documenting diversity
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COMMENTS 
Securing India's Future illustrates how India's natural resources are being depleted and the effects of this on those whose survival depends on them. The filmmakers travelled from tiny villages to national parks, recording hours and hours of vox populi footage
Democracy at the grassroots. That is what the process of drawing up the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) has turned out to be. It has involved the actual participation of thousands of citizens who have voiced their opinions and concerns about the need to conserve India's amazing wild and domesticated diversity and secure the livelihoods of those dependent on biological resources. But even as the final document takes shape for presentation to the central government during the last quarter of this year, the operational strategy employed over the past three years has been documented in a video film directed by Pune-based Vijendra Patil under the guidance of Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksh.
In what comes across as a visually enhancing and informative experience, the documentary, titled Securing India's Future, is the first ever attempt to record the country's rich diversity across more than a dozen sites, cutting across local, state, thematic and national levels. "This film was part of the initial proposal put up for preparing the diversity plan because we felt that there was a need to actually provide a window for everyone to see how our natural resources are getting depleted as also the effects caused on those whose survival depends on them," says Kothari, technical director in charge of co-ordination for the NBSAP.
Together then, Kothari and Patil traversed the country, trekking up hill slopes, sourcing tiny villages in deep forests, getting dangerously close to wildlife in national parks, visiting local ecological meets and exhibitions and zeroing in on practical problems through hours and hours of vox populi footage. Elaborates Kothari: "This entire exercise has been a challenging one because it not only takes into consideration India's natural diversity, depletion and methods of conservation before chalking out an action plan for the future but goes about it in a manner that refuses to restrict itself to empowering a few experts to make decisions based on borrowed knowledge."
As such, the trail includes a wide range of issues ranging from the importance of mangroves in the Kutch region to how ecological imbalances can affect tourism in Sikkim. The striking element is that both, the environmentalist and the filmmaker, have been able to achieve a rare kind of video sensitivity that brings the issues upfront. And it does so without landing itself in the talking-head genre of documentary filming wherein everyone has something to say and nothing to show. As Patil reveals, this is precisely what he was "scared" about before accepting the assignment. "Fortunately, Kothari had left wide margins to allow for the film to evolve on its own rather than follow a structured script. We were therefore able to capture images which have a spur of the moment quality or we would willingly walk 15 kilometres with the equipment to be able to get something that would tell its own story without the need for words," adds Patil.
Elaborating on how the biodiversity plan has come into being, Kothari states: "The loss of biodiversity is today a concern both at the local as well as global level. There have been several international treaties and pacts relating to it, the latest and most comprehensive being the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 by 155 nation states, and came into force in 1993. This legally binding treaty obliges ratifying countries to protect biodiversity, to move towards the sustainable use of biological resources and to ensure that benefits from such use are shared equitably across local, regional, national and global societies. India ratifed this Convention in 1994. As a signatory to the Convention, India is committed to taking appropriate legal and administrative steps to follow its provisions. Drafting of a Biological Diversity Act started in 1994 itself, and has recently been concluded with the Act being gazetted. In 1998, the Government of India applied for funding to the Global Environment Facility through the United Nations Development Program to formulate a comprehensive Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. The central concern for such an action plan and strategy was that it should be consistent with the ecological, social, cultural and economic framework of the country. In 1999, the UNDP approved a grant of almost one million dollars for this project."
Soon thereafter, in a highly unusual move, the Ministry of Environment and Forests invited Kalpavriksh, a 22-year-old NGO based in Delhi and Pune, to co-ordinate the technical execution of the project. Kalpavriksh set up a 15-member Technical and Policy Core Group to steer the process. The administrative aspect of the project was handed to Biotech Consortium India Limited, a public sector consultancy organisation.
As an innovative approach, the project was bound to attract all kinds of fresh challenges, the biggest of which was to reach out to almost everyone across the country. "We published an announcement calling for inputs in about 20 languages, distributed through mail and at workshops, fairs and festivals. We also conducted public hearings and used the mass media to let the objectives be known to many. In the mofussil areas, traditional communication means such as street theatre, dance dramas, mobile seed displays mounted on bullock carts which travelled through 65 villages in Andhra Pradesh, boat rallies on the East coast, a cycle rally in Orissa and posters were employed to invited participation," informs Kothari.
The 46-minute documentary, funded by the United Nations Development Programme, will now be screened at environment-related conferences held by government and other agencies and will also be dispatched to other countries for organisations to study as a role model. "We are also hoping that Doordarshan or any other television channel will express an interest in obtaining telecast rights because it is a film about our country's varied resources and we should all feel concerned about what is happening to them," states Kothari.
More importantly, the information and opinion-gathering process has developed a huge participatory link across the country and this, Kothari feels, is what should remain unbroken. "For any action plan to show results, the need is to explore the issue at a national level but without ignoring the smallest happening on a local front," opines Kothari. The film does that and more.
As for what has been gained, Kothari documents the following points: all kinds of biodiversity (ecosystems, species, genes) have been covered in the process, the various aspects of biodiversity have been dealt with in an integrated manner, gender sensitivity in terms of women's participation has not been ignored and the project has emerged as the first national exercise in which cross-cutting issues such as equity and people's empowerment have been taken into account along with biodiversity and the need for conservation. "The plan that will now follow should therefore be fool-proof," promises Kothari.
To get in touch with the film-makers or procure copies of the film contact Vijendra Patil at:
Bars and Tone Television Films
17,Sarvadarshan
Nal Stop Chowk
Pune - 411004
E-mail :
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(Huned Contractor is a Pune-based journalist and film critic)
InfoChange News & Features, August 2003