1 Draft, 2004 Protecting Traditional Knowledge of small, scattered and disadvantaged grassroots innovators and traditional knowledge holders: Honey Bee perspective : Agenda for Policy and Institutional Change P Vivekanandan 1 , T N Prakash 2 , P D James 3 , Ramesh Patel 4 , Sunda Ram Verma 5 , Balaram Sahu 6 , Hema Patel 7 , Kamal Jeet Miglani 8 , Riya Sinha 9 and Anil K Gupta 10 Most cultures around the world from time immemorial have exhibited dialectical tendencies of encouraging sharing of knowledge as widely as possible and at the same time encouraging, or at least tolerating, the efforts of some knowledge producers to keep their intellectual property secret. Some times the owners of the property tried to keep it secret through various coercive strategies. After all Shahjahan who built Taj Mahal did get the right hand of the workers who had built Taj Mahal, amputed so that they could not build another Taj Mahal. Many traditional medicine men and women decided to keep their life time experiences secret and thereby exercise control over the boundary of their knowledge domain. Traditional weavers of patan silk once were reported to impart the skills of producing patan silk only to their daughters in law instead of daughters so that skill did not go out of the family. Only four families are now left practicing this 750 year old silk weaving and dyeing tradition. However, these exceptions apart, by and large the communities and innovators have been very generous in sharing their knowledge with whosoever approached them. The result has been that they have remained poor whereas those who access their knowledge and develop products after seeking IP protection or otherwise, have become prosperous. Ironically the very success of the commercial products developed through value addition in local knowledge many times becomes reason for the erosion of knowledge itself. This happens through: i) excessive extraction of the 1 Executive Director, SEVA and Coordinator, Honey Bee Network, numvali@vsnl.com, Phone (O) 91-0452- 2380082 2 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, Karnataka 3 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, PEDES, Kerala 4 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, Gujarat and Secretary SRISTI, ramesh@sristi.org , 91 79 7913293 5 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, Rajasthan 6 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, Orissa 7 SRISTI, Gujarat 8 Regional collaborator, Honey Bee Network, Uttaranchal 9 National Coordinator (Scouting & Documentation), National Innovation Foundation, Ahmedabad- 380015, India. Ph. 91 79 673 2456, www.nifindia.org 10 Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad- 380015, India, and Coordinator SRISTI and Editor, Honey Bee. anilg@iimahd.ernet.in/ www.sristi.org/ Ph. 91 79 6304927/ Fax 91 79 6307341