Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
funded. How was the board able to implement its vision for Kerala? And
how did biodiversity and organic farming become embedded in state in-
stitutions? State political history has answers.
In the recent past, the Biodiversity Board has had direct connections
to the LDF and the state's Communist parties, which have significant
political sway among Kerala's citizens and over the government. At the
same time, the LDF's decentralization efforts, known as the People's Plan,
deeply influenced the board's priorities.8
The board's institutional history shows how it came to have these con-
nections with the LDF, the People's Plan, and even the KSSP. The Govern-
ment of Kerala set up the board in 2005 in response to the requirements
of the National Biodiversity Bill of 2002. The federal government had
enacted the national bill to implement the mandates of the international
Convention on Biological Diversity, which India had ratified in 1994.9 As
a signatory, India was required to develop a national strategy to promote
biodiversity, identify and monitor conservation efforts, and participate in
information exchange. The 2002 bill decentralized biodiversity conser-
vation efforts and mandated that each state create a biodiversity board.
Kerala was among the first states to fulfill this requirement.
The Chief Minister of Kerala, the highest-ranking official in the state,
presides over the board. Every five years he or she appoints the chair, five
nonofficial expert advisers, five ex-oicio members, and a member secre-
tary to direct the board. The Biodiversity Board, therefore, is an advisory
body comprised predominantly of political appointees. One member
even openly admited to me in an interview that not only was he heavily
involved in party politics but he was deliberately put on the board by the
CPI(M) to protect the party's interests in all maters relating to biodiversity
in the state.
W hen voters in Kerala put the LDF back into political power in 2007,
the board was only two years old, in an inchoate stage, and barely staffed;
it didn't even have a chair. The LDF appointed the ornithologist Vijayan as
the new chair, only the second in the board's short history. The governing
party also appointed several scientists who are members of the KSSP and
who were instrumental in implementing the People's Plan. At a crucial
