Adivasi communities in India depend extensively on wild flora and fauna, particularly for food and medicine. In recent decades, the collection and sale of medicinal plants have emerged as an important lean-season livelihood activity for several Adivasi communities in the Western Ghats. What was once primarily a system of home remedies has gradually shifted towards market-oriented collection, a transition especially evident among relatively marginalised groups in Wayanad, including the Paniyan, Adiyan, Urali Kuruma, and Kattunayakan communities.

Kurunthotti (Sida cordifolia), an annual herb, is among the most prominent medicinal plants collected. It is widely used and in high demand within the Ayurvedic pharmaceutical industry, particularly in Kerala. However, more than 90% of medicinal plant species across the country are reported to be at risk due to excessive and unsustainable harvesting, overexploitation, and unskilled collection practices (Gowthami et al., 2021).

In Wayanad, Kurunthotti grows along roadsides, vacant lands, forests, and forest edges, and its collection provides a crucial source of income during the lean agricultural season. The collection period from September to November (the Malayalam months of Kanni and Thulam) follows the completion of major harvests, particularly paddy, around Onam, Kerala’s principal harvest festival. With agricultural wage opportunities declining during this period, communities turn to supplementary activities such as food gathering and medicinal plant collection.

Despite its importance, the continued availability and collection of Kurunthotti are increasingly constrained. The plant’s gradual domestication and cultivation, inadequate and fluctuating market prices, declining availability due to climate variability and overharvesting, and the rapid spread of invasive species have made collection progressively more difficult for local gatherers.

This article examines the bottlenecks in the collection, conservation, and marketing of Kurunthotti, and their implications for medicinal plant-based livelihoods among Adivasi communities in Wayanad.

Community perspective

The collection of Kurunthotti often involves family labour, with husbands and wives accompanied by their adult children during harvesting. Uprooting the plant from hardened soil is an arduous task, and many women collectors report severe back pain during the collection season. Subbannan, a resident of a tribal hamlet Thazhassery Adiya Unnathi in Wayanad district, explains, “In earlier times, the moderate showers during the Malayalam months of Kanni and Thulam (mid-September to mid-November) helped us uproot Kurunthotti easily. Now the situation has changed. Due to climate variability, we experience intense rainfall followed by long dry spells, which makes the soil stiff and extremely hard.” He says that the harvesting method has remained the same despite passing years, and the back and leg pain remain a part of the process. “During harvesting season, we cannot consume spicy food or a lot of salt because the cracks in our skin cause intense burning. We begin our collection trips early in the morning and often skip lunch, working continuously for 12–14 hours. Yet the returns are uncertain: on some days, we earn as little as ₹200, while on rare occasions, we may earn up to ₹1,500 per person.”

In recent years, the availability of Kurunthotti within forests has declined due to unsustainable harvesting and the spread of invasive species. At the same time, the availability of the plant along roadsides and common lands has also reduced, partly because of routine pathway and roadside clearance carried out under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Changing collection taskscapes

Forest taskscapes in the region have undergone considerable transformation over the years. The rapid spread of invasive plant species particularly Senna spectabilis, Lantana camara, and Chromolaena odorata has suppressed the natural growth of Kurunthotti. An 80-year-old community elder Mallan reflects, “Hardly four people were involved in Kurunthotti collection earlier from the entire settlement. Now, from this settlement alone, at least 20 people go for collection. This increased pressure is also leading to its disappearance.” He points to increasing risks of animal encounters. “On a single trip, we encountered five elephants. We must be extremely cautious now.”

The availability of Kurunthotti outside forest areas has also declined. In the months of October and November, collectors reported difficulty harvesting the plant from common lands due to the spread of Mimosa diplotricha C. Wright, locally known as Aanathottavadi. This small, often scrambling neo-tropical shrub, an invasive species, has formed dense, impenetrable spiny thickets that colonise highly disturbed sites and agricultural landscapes (CABI, 2019).

Climate disasters add uncertainty

The losses caused by the disastrous 2024 landslide in Wayanad have been widely documented. The landslide wiped out nearly 86,000 square metres of land across the slopes of Mundakkai overnight, according to satellite imagery released by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Communities from highly affected areas such as Mundakkai, Attamala, and Chooralmala, located within the Meppady region, traditionally relied on these hill slopes for Kurunthotti collection during the lean agricultural season.

Local collection at Thrikkaipatta, for instance, has recorded a significant decline in the quantity of Kurunthotti brought in by community members following the landslide. As availability decreased, the seasonal livelihood opportunities associated with medicinal plant collection have also diminished. This decline has particularly affected vulnerable groups within Adivasi communities, including women and elderly collectors who depend heavily on such activities for supplementary income during agricultural off-seasons.

Market as an uncertain space

Contrary to conventional economic logic, the price of Kurunthotti has remained stagnant or even declined despite increasing demand. Kurunthotti is one of the 35 medicinal plant species promoted for cultivation under the National Medicinal Plants Board. However, the expansion of its cultivation within and outside Kerala appears to be influencing local market dynamics and affecting the incomes of traditional collectors.

Gireesh P.B., representative of the Girijan Cooperative Society, a Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) collection centre at Pulpally, says, “Affluent farmers have started cultivating Kurunthotti which has affected the demand. The society has tried its best to address the problem of middlemen appropriation, but even the society itself is struggling to survive.” He explains multiple challenges in both collection and marketing. “On one hand, the availability in the wild is declining. This year, we procured only 47 tonnes compared to 52 tonnes in previous years. At the same time, the price has fallen to ₹84 per kg of dried Kurunthotti, whereas two years ago, it was around ₹110 per kg.”

In the changing context, most Kurunthotti-collecting Adivasi households lack sufficient cultivable land to shift towards cultivation as an alternative livelihood strategy. As a result, while market-oriented cultivation expands elsewhere, traditional forest-dependent collectors continue to face declining access to the resource and thereby economic returns.

According to V.V. Sivan, scientist at M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, unscientific harvesting before seed disbursal, along with several other factors, is one of the major reasons for the depletion of Kurunthotti which may eventually lead to its scarcity. “We have two options to conserve Kurunthotti — either delay harvest till seeding or maintain at least 25% of the total Kurunthotti as unharvested. As a good practice to ensure the sustainability of this valuable bio-resource, the users, collectors and the conservers can collect the seed and broadcast them in suitable habitats,” he says.

In addition, he says, invasive species like Singapore daisy spread over common places and roadsides where Kurunthotti abundantly grew earlier, inhibiting the growth of native vegetation. “If we create an enabling system to do the minimum processing by collectors themselves, at least washing and drying, it will enhance the value as well as the income of the collectors. This could address market issues and middle men appropriation. We need collective effort from collectors, buyers and other relevant stakeholders to enable all these,” he elaborates.

There is an urgent need for policy interventions that ensure fair and stable pricing mechanisms, strengthen conservation measures, and promote context-specific, co-designed technologies that can ease the labour-intensive collection process. Such measures are essential to safeguard both biodiversity and the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities.

The current situation also calls for greater attention to the development of alternative and sustainable livelihood opportunities for Adivasi communities. Without such interventions, the combined pressures of ecological change, declining resource availability, and unstable markets may further deepen the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of these already marginalised groups.

Vipindas P. and Sujith M.M. work on community agrobiodiversity at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation; Thippi Thazhassery is a member of the Adiya Adivasi community; Abhi Augustine is a Master’s student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Citation:

• CABI, (2019). Invasive Species Compendium. Wallingford, UK: CAB International. www.cabi.org/isc.
• Gowthami, R., Sharma, N., Pandey, R., Agrawal, A., 2021. Status and consolidated list of threatened medicinal plants of India. Genet. Resour. Crop. Evol. 68 (6), 2235–2263. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-021-01199-0.
• Sarma, B., Baruah, P.S., Tanti, B., 2018. Habitat distribution modeling for reintroduction and conservation of Aristolochia indica L. — a threatened medicinal plant in Assam, India. J. Threat Taxa 10 (11), 12531–12537. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.3600.10.11.12531-12537.
• Thattantavide Anju, Ajay Kumar, 2024. Traditional ecological knowledge and medicinal plant diversity usage among the Mullu Kuruman tribes of Wayanad district of Kerala, India and its implications for biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change, Trees, Forests and People, Volume 16, 100595, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100595.

Banner image: Velli, a Paniyan elder collects Kurunthotti in Meppady, Wayanad. Image by Sujith M.M.

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AgricultureClimate ChangeFoodForestsIndigenous PeoplesIndigenous RightsPlantsKerala

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