On October 25, the extreme cyclonic storm Dana struck the jap coast of India, bringing torrential rain and high-velocity winds that uprooted timber and electrical poles in Odisha and West Bengal. It introduced again reminiscences of Cyclone Amphan, which prompted large injury in 2020. West Bengal’s Shibpur botanical backyard, one of many largest and oldest botanical gardens in South Asia, was ravaged, with greater than 2,000 timber uprooted. Amphan left two empty patches within the backyard’s chief attraction, the Nice Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis), recorded as the most important tree specimen on the planet within the e book of Guinness World Data in 1989. Due to its extensive cover, the greater than 250-year-old tree is a forest in itself.
However the banyan has weathered many such storms, together with one in 1925 that prompted a lethal fungal an infection in its fundamental trunk. The trunk was amputated to make the tree survive. Following the devastation brought on by Amphan, “efforts are being made to replenish the bald patches by coaching the prop roots by means of bamboo stalks stuffed with earth”, mentioned the current superintendent of the backyard, Dr Devendra Singh, who can be Joint Director, Botanical Survey of India (BSI), which is in command of the heritage property.
A map displaying the format of the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Backyard.
| Photograph Credit score:
Botanical Survey of India
In 1907, the historian H.E.A. Cotton (1868-1939) wrote in his Calcutta Outdated And New: A Historic and Descriptive Handbook to the Metropolis: “The Royal Botanic Backyard (based in 1786 by the East India Firm, by the recommendation of Colonel Kyd, of the Bengal Engineers, who turned its first Superintendent), is located within the suburb of Howrah on the other facet of the river [Hooghly] from Calcutta and instantly beneath the Authorities Engineering School. The higher entrance gate of the backyard… is well reached by a great highway which passes by means of Howrah and the village of Seebpore….”
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The “good highway” continues to be there, however the entrance is now clogged with unlawful retailers, hawkers, and shacks with bathrooms leaning towards the backyard wall. Buses cease in entrance of the gate, making entry tough. As soon as the city sprawl is left behind, the premises of the backyard itself—with acres of leafy arbours, groves, and lengthy vistas of advantageous timber, creepers, and coppices; unique flowering crops; and grassy knolls by decorative sheets of water—nonetheless really feel like a paradise on earth.
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Renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Backyard in 2009, the erstwhile “Firm Bagan” (East India Firm backyard) is “a residing repository of 1,377 plant species and tallying to quite a few 14,122 crops, together with timber, shrubs and climbers, possesses 25 divisions and 24 interconnected lakes…”, to cite from the BSI web site. The backyard, regionally referred to as the Shibpur backyard (it’s positioned in Shibpur of West Bengal’s Howrah district), has a wealthy array of curiosities and sights. Chief amongst them are the Nice Banyan tree; the “Giant Palm Home containing wealthy assortment of palms together with Lodoicea maldivica (the double coconut palm); …the Big Water Lily (Victoria amazonica) introduced from the Amazon river; …mountain rose or Venezuelan rose (Brownea sp.); Baobab tree…(Adansonia digitata) native of Africa; Rosogolla tree (Chrysohyllum cainito)”; and plenty of extra. The mahogany timber that kind the avenues have been shipped all the best way from the West Indies in 1795.
The empty patches left within the Nice Banyan following Cyclone Amphan in 2020.
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
Captain George King (1840-1909), who took cost as superintendent in 1871, designed the current lay of the backyard, which was wrecked by a cataclysmic cyclone in 1864. To cease flooding, he devised a sequence of synthetic lakes by elevating the bottom degree.
Want of a brand new imaginative and prescient
At the moment, correct upkeep of the sprawling backyard is hindered by a scarcity of funds. “There is no such thing as a particular funding for the backyard,” mentioned Dr A.A. Mao, Director, BSI. The price range for the BSI is greater than Rs.100 crore for 2024-25, to be divided amongst its 17 items throughout India. The BSI has 11 gardens and 500 acres below its care. Practically 80 per cent of the price range is spent on employees wage, abandoning a meagre 20 per cent for the gardens and analysis. Mao has appealed to Kolkata-based company homes like ITC Ltd and CESC for assist however none has been forthcoming.
Dr A. A. Mao, Director, BSI, mentioned “There is no such thing as a particular funding for the backyard.”
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
In 2021, a survey performed by the College of Edinburgh together with the Asia Scotland Belief (AST) and Neeta Subhrajit Das Associates (NSDA), a Kolkata-based structure agency, concluded that the backyard wanted a brand new imaginative and prescient. If its orientation might be modified to setting and local weather change, because the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London has performed, funds might be tapped extra simply. Sandra Botterell, director of selling and industrial enterprises at Kew Gardens, mentioned that Kew, as a substitute of harping on previous glories, is “targeted on discovering nature-based options to finish the twin crises of biodiversity loss and local weather change”.
Reviving Roxburgh Home
Plans are underway to revive and reuse the 231-year-old home of William Roxburgh, first superintendent of the Shibpur Botanical Backyard in West Bengal.
A succession of pioneering botanists nurtured the Shibpur backyard in its early years, led by the Scottish surgeon and botanist William Roxburgh (1751-1815), who was appointed its first official superintendent in 1793. He drew up a listing of three,500 crops rising inside that was revealed as Hortus Bengalensis in 1814. Remembered because the “Father of Indian Botany”, Roxburgh collected crops from India, South-East Asia, and East Asia to arrange a herbarium in 1795 on the bottom flooring of his residence contained in the backyard.
Often known as the Central Nationwide Herbarium and housed in a brand new constructing now, the herbarium has 2.5 million dried plant specimens, other than varied papers and monographs. A.A. Mao, Director, Botanical Survey of India (BSI), mentioned: “It’s presumably one of many largest repositories of data about flowers.” Treasures embody the invaluable catalogue of Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854), who was appointed the superintendent of the backyard in 1817.
Roxburgh Home, the place Roxburgh lived and labored for years, now stands deserted on the banks of the Hooghly. It’s a strong three-storey construction, with a porte-cochère on the north and a curved projecting verandah on the south, dealing with the Hooghly. The Roxburgh Worldwide Hub Undertaking, launched in March 2019, plans to revive and reuse the 231-year-old home together with two different buildings throughout the Shibpur backyard’s premises, referred to as Outdated Herbarium and Outdated Seed Retailer.
As soon as full, the venture can have a museum, an interpretation centre, a analysis centre, and a gallery with family-friendly facilities. The collaborators embody the Union Ministry of Atmosphere, Forest and Local weather Change; the BSI; the architectural consortium of Simpson & Brown Architects, Edinburgh, and Alleya and Associates, Kolkata; apart from charitable entities within the UK and India.
Undertaking director Nilina Deb Lal mentioned that over a yr, they’ve acquired funding from varied sources for the preparation of a preliminary venture report for the Outdated Herbarium. One other venture, launched in 2023 by HSBC India and the Kolkata chapter of the Indian Nationwide Belief for Artwork and Cultural Heritage in partnership with the BSI, entails rolling out a conservation and outreach programme value Rs.6 crore.
The Shibpur backyard might do the identical, aligning itself with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Growth, which incorporates “tackling local weather change and dealing to protect our oceans and forests”. The truth that the Shibpur backyard’s Hooghly water edge continues on to the Sundarbans might be used to spice up analysis on the backyard’s mangrove plantation. “One ought to take a look at the belongings in a futuristic method and never solely in a historic method. Neighborhood growth might usher in funding,” mentioned Neeta Das.
In Might and June 2021, a group participation venture for the regeneration of the backyard held by the BSI, the AST, and Edinburgh College, recognized two micro biodiversity scorching spots within the backyard: areas with a excessive overgrowth of timber, crops, weeds, and two of the lakes within the grounds. Das advised that the backyard might be changed into a biodiversity scorching spot.
Roxburgh Home stands deserted on the banks of the Hooghly at current.
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
Such strategies should not all the time met with enthusiasm. There have been allegations that the backyard is being changed into a park for leisure and lacks correct governance. Mao denied the allegations whereas asserting that conservation, experimentation, and schooling are the objectives of the backyard even when funding is scarce. “The backyard’s ongoing analysis focusses on a number of important areas just like the introduction and multiplication of threatened and endemic crops; conservation and multiplication of medicinal crops; propagation of economically vital crops; and hybridisation of decorative crops,” he defined.
Niggling troubles
Troubles are aplenty, lots of them workaday however niggling nonetheless. The wall across the 273 acre grounds supplies insufficient safety. Native residents usually climb over the wall, significantly on the Nazirgunj facet, close to the ferry ghat, and plugging the breaches just isn’t a everlasting answer.
The large water lily (Victoria amazonica) within the Shibpur botanical backyard.
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
“Timber leaning on the wall usually injury it. They can’t be trimmed as a result of environmentalists could scream homicide. Even when timber that are uprooted on their very own are eliminated, individuals suppose they’ve been felled,” mentioned Mao. The groundwater degree being excessive, roots don’t go deep down. Consequently, timber can topple simply.
Complaints to the authorities in regards to the obstructions on the backyard entrance have made no distinction. The employees are threatened for daring to complain. There’s a plan to exchange the outdated brick wall with a concrete boundary wall in phases, starting with the primary gate part.
The canal on the north of the backyard has changed into a clogged drain.
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DEBASISH BHADURI
The canal within the north of the backyard has changed into a clogged drain as residents of the flats on the opposite facet of the wall freely dump rubbish in it. Related to the Hooghly, the canal used to behave as a conduit for the 24 backyard lakes throughout excessive tide, with two sluice gates controlling the water degree. Now the canal is stuffed with sewage, and the sluice gate outdoors the backyard is chock-a-block with waste.
On the north-east facet of the backyard is what was as soon as the “coolie traces”: hutments meant for gardeners and different employees. Through the years, these dwellings have been appropriated both by relations of the employees or occupied by encroachers. Shut by is a small gate over and above the 2 fundamental gates of the backyard, and safety personnel however, entry by means of this gate is straightforward sufficient. Near the riverbank and the Nazirganj ferry ghat is a mazar (an Islamic shrine) that got here up years in the past on the backyard’s land. Whereas that shrine stays, an unauthorised car parking zone outdoors it has now been eliminated. The “coolie line” and the mazar collectively occupy 4 acres.
The hutments meant for gardeners and different employees have been appropriated both by relations of the employees or occupied by encroachers.
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
These encroachments apart, the Hooghly is quickly consuming into the lands. The mangrove plantation alongside the riverbank, meant to stabilise it and scale back erosion, already has 5,000 timber. Some drastic measures are wanted to comprise the river.
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If the Shibpur backyard is to outlive, it should check out different sources of revenue since gate cash is evidently not sufficient to maintain it. Given its nice historic and botanical significance, the backyard can revamp itself by focussing on leisure and schooling. Making provisions for household leisure might usher in income. As long as the backyard just isn’t changed into an amusement park and analysis just isn’t back-burnered, improved facilities can solely add to the sights of the backyard.
Soumitra Das is a contract journalist based mostly in Kolkata.
