Tamils be­ing an an­cient eth­nic com­mu­nity, have close con­nec­tions with the Palmyra Tree. The palm tree is weaved into the life, lan­guage and cul­ture of the Tamils. The qual­i­ties and spe­cial­i­ties of the palm are men­tioned in the Sangam pe­riod his­tor­i­cal texts in­clud­ing Tolkap­piyam, Thirukkural and Silap­pathikaram. Vi­g­nesh B -young law stu­dent and re­searcher with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Wing of the Naam Tami­lar Party traces the im­por­tance of the Palm tree in Tamil life, the rea­sons for its de­cline over the decades and cur­rent steps be­ing taken to re­vive this eco­log­i­cal won­der with so many en­vi­ron­men­tal, em­ploy­ment, em­pow­er­ment and eco­nomic ben­e­fits. The story has lessons for other re­gions to re­ori­ent their agri­cul­tural prac­tices.

HOME TO TAMIL NADU, where it is des­ig­nated as the Of­fi­cial State Tree, the palm is found all over the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent. Out of the es­ti­mated 8.59 cores of Palmyra in In­dia, about 5.10 cores of palmyra are in Tamil Nadu. An­cient Tamil lit­er­a­ture texts have been handed over through gen­er­a­tions through palm-leaf in­scrip­tions as they have a long life span of 120 years and can at­tain a height of 100 feet and more. Re­gional bound­aries were marked us­ing palm trees.

The root sys­tem of the Palm has a cen­tral fi­bre sur­rounded by a spongy layer that stores wa­ter. With a huge vol­ume of wa­ter in their tubu­lar roots, it in­creases the wa­ter table level of the lo­cal­ity. Thus it has a greater ca­pac­ity to turn arid land into highly fer­tile land with rich ground­wa­ter re­sources. This was per­haps the rea­son for the early Tamils plant­ing palm trees around the wa­ter re­sources like rivers, tanks and wells in large num­bers. The tree could also with­stand nat­ural calami­ties like a mag­i­cal wall. 

In the re­cent past, Tamil Nadu has wit­nessed sev­eral nat­ural calami­ties. Dur­ing Cy­clone Gaja that hit the east coast on No­vem­ber 16, 2018, huge branches snapped and trees were up­rooted. How­ever, most of the Palmyra trees stood firm and rooted. While co­conut trees were bro­ken into two or even four parts, the palmyra trees stood un­af­fected.

Dur­ing cy­clones, the Palmyra trees stood firm and rooted.

Palm Tree Nungu, Palm Syrup, Palm jag­gery and Palmyra Sprout are some of the ed­i­ble palm prod­ucts from the Palmyra trees that are good for health.  Palm leaves are used for roof­ing and in var­i­ous hand­i­crafts, while ma­ture palm trees are used to make wooden frames. As the palm tree gives var­i­ous ben­e­fits it is called “Karpaka Virut­sam”.  

In re­cent times, there has been a steady de­cline in the num­ber of Palm trees. Ac­cord­ing to one es­ti­mate, some sixty years ago the num­ber of Palm trees in Tamil Nadu was around 300 mil­lion whereas they are now es­ti­mated to be only 50 mil­lion. 

Suc­cumb­ing to the race of moder­nity, there is a grow­ing ten­dency of de­vi­a­tion from the us­age of palm prod­ucts in the state of Tamil Nadu. The num­ber of peo­ple en­gaged in palm prod­ucts re­lated oc­cu­pa­tions is also on a de­cline. A lot of Palm re­lated prod­ucts are not avail­able as many of the oc­cu­pa­tional method­olo­gies have be­come ex­tinct. Work­ers in­volved in palm prod­uct-re­lated jobs are also fac­ing eco­nomic is­sues and not re­ceiv­ing a proper mar­ket for their prod­ucts. Their liveli­hood has hit the rock bot­tom. The en­tire palm-based econ­omy in the state is on a de­cline.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tance of Palm Trees in fu­elling an al­ter­na­tive econ­omy, which is eco-friendly, his­toric and which has a huge ca­pac­ity for job gen­er­a­tion, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Wing of the Tamil party -Naam Tami­lar Katchi has made a spe­cial men­tion of the Palm Tree in­dus­try in its elec­tion man­i­festos over the years. 

The par­ty’s en­vi­ron­men­tal wing also con­ducts a Palm Fest every year to sow Palmyra seeds in lakhs of num­bers all over Tamil­nadu. This ini­tia­tive has re­ceived ap­pre­ci­a­tion from all over and the other po­lit­i­cal par­ties are also en­am­oured with the pro­ject. 

I urge the Thamizh Nadu gov­ern­ment to take steps to in­crease the pro­duc­tion of palm prod­ucts, im­prove the liveli­hood of palm work­ers, and mod­ern­ize the palm in­dus­try.

Sen­thamizhan See­man, Chief Co­or­di­na­tor, Naam Tami­lar Party

This year, Naam Tami­lar Katchi took the ini­tia­tive to the next level. A planned Palm Expo com­pris­ing Palm prod­uct sell­ers and work­ers was or­gan­ised in a mod­ern-style ex­hi­bi­tion. NTK Chief co­or­di­na­tor Sen­thamizhan See­man, in­au­gu­rat­ing the Palm Expo em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of palm trees and the mar­ket based on Palm prod­ucts. 

Re­leas­ing the NTK’s “Draft Palm-based Eco­nomic Plan” doc­u­ment, See­man ex­plained the need to re­vive the palm-based econ­omy. He also urged the Thamizh Nadu gov­ern­ment to take steps to in­crease the pro­duc­tion of palm prod­ucts, im­prove the liveli­hood of palm work­ers, and mod­ern­ize the palm in­dus­try. 

See­man elab­o­rated, “The value of toddy-based prod­ucts ex­tracted from a sin­gle palm tree is Rs. 4,000, the value of Jag­gery-based prod­ucts is Rs. 6,000, the value of palm-based prod­ucts from a sin­gle tree amounts to Rs. 10,240 ap­prox­i­mately. The to­tal po­ten­tial rev­enue gen­er­a­tion from 5 crore palm trees in Thamizh Nadu is Rs 51,200 crore. 

The ex­hibits in­cluded the con­tem­po­rary is­sues of Toddy Draw­ers and Man­u­scripts writ­ten on palm leaves. dis­played by the Thamizh Re­trieval Wing.

The unique Palm Expo show­cased home needs and dec­o­ra­tive items made of palm trees, suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing aware­ness among the pub­lic. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Palmyra arte­facts and palm-fruit juice sweet­ened with black jag­gery be­came the best­sellers. A to­tal of 400 kg of black and brown jag­gery were sold out at this expo. The palm honey by the ‘Sem­mai An­gadi’ was com­pletely sold out.  Peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ated the ar­ti­san’s skill in mak­ing unique hand­i­crafts which were ea­gerly lapped up by the hun­dreds of vis­i­tors to the expo. 

“Par­tic­i­pants at the two-day expo -from ven­dors to buy­ers ex­pressed the de­sire that this should be­come an an­nual event 

Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van, State Sec­re­tary, En­vi­ron­ment Wing, Naam Tami­lar Katchi

The ex­hibits also il­lus­trated the con­tem­po­rary is­sues of Toddy Draw­ers. There were Man­u­scripts writ­ten on palm leaves dis­played by NTK’s Thamizh Re­trieval Wing.

On the fun side, the expo was abuzz with ac­tiv­ity as chil­dren played with toys made of palm leaves, noth­ing short of a gala for them. 

“Par­tic­i­pants at the two-day expo -from ven­dors to buy­ers ex­pressed the de­sire that this should be­come an an­nual event and that grad­u­ally it should be­come the har­bin­ger of a rev­o­lu­tion,” said Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van, the sheet an­chor of the event and State Sec­re­tary of NTK’s En­vi­ron­ment Wing. 

With spe­cial in­ter­ests in Eco­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion and En­vi­ron­ment, Vi­g­nesh. B is a stu­dent of Law and a mem­ber of Naam Tami­lar Katchi. He is adept at tak­ing up doc­u­men­ta­tion for le­gal steps against anti-en­vi­ron­ment pro­jects.