Tradition; personified and embellished.

What has been a major concavity in the Indian Intellectual Property Regime, what with the famed Turmeric, Basmati, and Yogasana – related brouhaha, is now being aimed to be subverted, by the formulation and release of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (www.tkdl.res.in/)

Its Wikipedia entry can be found here:
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Knowledge_Digital_Library

This ensemble of information provides a scientific conversion of information of traditional Indian medicine from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Tamil into fire international languages viz., English, Japanese, French, German, and Spanish.

Amount of Effort involved: 8years; over 2000 scientists, for documenting over 2,00,000 formulations of Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani, 54 authorative textbooks on ayurvedic medicine, over 1,500 physical exercises and postures in yoga, more than 5,000 years old.
Departments Involved: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Indian Union Health Ministry’s Department of Ayush, National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), Ministry of Science & Technology, Department of Indian System of Medicine and Homeopathy (ISM&H), Central Council of Research in Ayurveda and Siddha (CCRAS), Banaras Hindu University (BHS), National Informatics Centre (NIC),National Institute of Science Communication (NISCOM).
Cost: approx US$ 2 million.


Trouble brewed, in the first instance, mainly because what has been traditionally been passed as home-knowledge from one generation to another, is a matter-of-fact in India, but many a commercial eyes, sought to nip and juice this legacy, in order to cash in on the ‘secrets’ of Indian traditional knowledge, by carefully camouflaging and packaging, before serving it to the western hemisphere.

Since, none of such information had a time-stamp as such, it became the prerogative of the Indian Government to first receive flak, and then to safeguard these teachings from becoming a monopoly, by taking on this massive initiative.

This step is a large cementing step in asserting our rights, and allowing the world, access to a repository of Information.

The idea is to allow the EPO and its examiner’s access to search these databases to confirm and establish prior art before proceeding towards grant.

With a firm document of evidence, we now hope to hoist and embed our flag of tradition(al knowledge), in the fight against preventing monopolistic rights, in relation to teachings and discoveries made by scholars of ancient India.