Quinine Nongladew is a village named after the alkaloid quinine extracted from the bark of cinchona.
Quinine, its most primitive antimalarial avatar.
Cinchona is a plant belonging to the Rubiaceae family and classified as either a large shrub or a small tree.
The village, is about 70 km south of Guwahati, is on the highway to Meghalaya capital Shillong.
Meghalaya’s Forests and Environment Department has no records on the Quinine Garden.
The cinchona nursery was raised in the 19th century, probably around 1874, when Shillong became the British administrative headquarters for Assam Province.
The nursery on an unknown area fell into disuse by the mid-1950s, the plantation was not much of a success at it involved an exotic species brought from South America.
Large swathes of Meghalaya used to be, and still are, malaria-prone.
The British had the foresight to start the plantation to combat malaria and other diseases caused by mosquitoes.
One of the reasons is that the Forest Department has no control over the area where a few cinchonas grow uncared for.
According to the Indian State of Forest Report 2019, Meghalaya has a forest cover of 76.32% of its geographical area.
But the department lords over only 1,113 sq km forest area while the remaining 16,005.79 sq km is under community and private ownership.
Forest Department have no jurisdiction over Quinine Garden or whatever is left of it.
Recently the COVID-19 pandemic has generated interest among locals in the cinchona tree.
The villagers also sniff commercial gain if quinine goes on to become a source of cure for the disease, which is incurable for now.
