आपका भोजन धीमे जहर में बदल रहा है। फलों से सब्जियों तक, दूध से लेकर कोल्ड ड्रिंक, घी, खाद्य तेल, आटा, दाल और मसालों से मिठाई तक जो भी आप खा रहे हैं, इसकी पूरी आशंका है कि उसमें जहर है। बाजार से आप जो भी खाद्य पदार्थ खरीदते हैं वे करीब-करीब सभी मिलावटी हैं। भोजन आपका दुश्मन बन गया है। रसीले आम अब आपका पसंदीदा फल नहीं रह गया है। इसे कैल्शियम कार्बाइड से पकाया जाता है। यह वही रसायन है जिसे पटाखों और सस्ते बम बनाने में इस्तेमाल किया जाता है। कैल्शियम कार्बाइड में आर्सेनिक और फास्फोरस का अंश होता है। इनसे एसिटिलीन गैस निकलती है, जो फलों को तेजी से पकाती है। गैस के प्रभाव में आकर फल को विकसित करने वाले हार्र्मोस तेजी से सक्रिय हो जाते हैं। कैल्शियम कार्बाइड का इस्तेमाल खाद्य पदार्थो में नहीं किया जाना चाहिए और इसे बच्चों की पहुंच से दूर रखा जाना चाहिए। इसकी सहायता से पकाया जाने वाला फल आकर्षक लगता है और उस पर रंग भी खूब निखरता है।
आपके परिवार में पीढि़यों से सोने से पहले एक गिलास दूध पीने की परंपरा चल रही होगी। आप हमेशा सोचते होंगे कि इससे आपके शरीर को जरूरी पोषक तत्व मिल जाते हैं, किंतु अनेक वर्र्षो से सुनने में आ रहा है कि दूध में सिंथेटिक तत्वों की मिलावट हो रही है, जिनमें यूरिया, डिटरजेंट और खाद्य तेल शामिल हैं। आप बाजार से जो सब्जियां खाते हैं उनमें से अधिकांश में कीटनाशकों की भारी मात्रा होती है। ताजा और आकर्षक दिखाने के लिए बहुत सी सब्जियों को रसायनों के घोल में रखा जाता है। आंखों को भाए, इसके लिए इन्हें बनावटी रंगों से रंगा भी जाता है। हालिया वर्षो में इस तरह की खबरें बराबर आ रही हैं कि सब्जियों का आकार बढ़ाने के लिए उनमें आक्सीटोसिन हार्मोस के इंजेक्शन भी लगाए जा रहे हैं।
इस बात की पूरी संभावना है कि जो देसी घी आप खरीद रहे हैं वह मिलावटी हो। अच्छी कीमत अदा करने के बाद भी आपको पोषक तत्व के बजाय जानवरों की चर्बी, हड्डियों का चूरा और खनिज तेल मिलता है। जो लोग देसी घी का इस्तेमाल करने में असमर्थ हैं उनके लिए वनस्पति में भी मिलावट की जा रही है। इसमें स्टेरिन की मिलावट होती है, जो साबुन के उत्पादन में इस्तेमाल होने वाले पाम आयल का सह उत्पाद है। हरियाणा के पानीपत से खबर आई है कि वहां से पुलिस ने तीन हजार किलोग्राम मिलावटी घी बरामद किया है।
यह अकेली घटना नहीं है। इस प्रकार की घी उत्पादन की इकाइयां पंजाब, हरियाणा, उत्तर प्रदेश, बिहार, मध्य प्रदेश, राजस्थान और महाराष्ट्र में जगह-जगह बिखरी हुई हैं। माना जाता है कि बाजार में बेचा जाने वाला 90 प्रतिशत वनस्पति घी खाद्य मिलावट रोकथाम अधिनियम की शर्तो का उल्लंघन करता है। मिलावट इस हद तक है कि मिठाई में इस्तेमाल होने वाले पिस्ते को भी बख्शा नहीं जा रहा है। मिलावट करने वाले व्यापारी घटिया क्वालिटी के मूंगफली दानों को छोटे-छोटे टुकड़ों में काटकर उन्हें रंग देते हैं। सिंथेटिक दूध भी आम है। इस मामले में भी देश का पश्चिमोत्तर भाग मिलावटी दूध और इससे बने उत्पादों में अग्रणी भूमिका निभा रहा है।
अब मुझे इस बात पर प्रकाश डालना चाहिए कि मिलावटी भोजन के कारण आपके साथ क्या-क्या हो सकता है? मिलावटी भोजन के कारण अनेक प्रकार की बीमारियां हो सकती हैं। जब तक डाक्टरों को यह पता नहीं चलेगा कि आपने मिलावटी वस्तु विशेष का उपभोग कर लिया है, तब तक वे भ्रम में डालने वाले सामान्य लक्षणों के आधार पर इलाज करते हैं। यही कारण है कि आम लोगों को यह पता नहीं चल पाता कि उनके रोग का संबंध मिलावटी भोजन से है। उदाहरण के लिए मिलावटी पिश्तों के खाने से एसिडिटी, तेज सिरदर्द, उलटी और अनेक मामलों में गर्भवती महिला पर बड़ा घातक प्रभाव पड़ता है। सिंथेटिक दूध आपके शरीर के अंगों को अपूरणीय क्षति पहुंचाता है। यह कुल मिलाकर स्वास्थ्य को तो नुकसान पहुंचाता ही है, किंतु अगर आप हृदय और किडनी के रोगों से ग्रस्त हैं तो यह इन बीमारियों को तेजी के साथ बढ़ा सकता है। यूरिया खास तौर पर किडनी के लिए नुकसानदायक है, जबकि कास्टिक सोडा दिल और हाइपरटेंशन के मरीजों के लिए बेहद घातक है। कैल्शियम कार्बाइड से पके आम और केले सिरदर्द, चक्कर आना, नींद उड़ना और बहुत से मामलों में मानसिक असंतुलन की स्थिति पैदा कर सकते हैं। भोजन में लेड की अधिक मात्रा से दिमाग पर बुरा असर पड़ता है, जबकि कैडमियम से किडनी रोग और कैंसर हो सकता है। यह तो कुछ खतरे मात्र हैं, नुकसानदायक रसायनों से होने वाले नुकसान की सूची काफी लंबी है।
परेशान करने वाली बात यह है कि खाद्य पदार्र्थो में मिलावट पर रोकथाम की जिम्मेदार नियामक इकाइयां इस संबंध में जरा भी ध्यान नहीं दे रही हैं। हाल में टीवी कार्यक्रमों में बार-बार खबरें आने के बावजूद मिलावट करने वाले व्यापारियों के खिलाफ राष्ट्रव्यापी अभियान चलाने का शायद ही कभी प्रयास हुआ हो। कुछ नियमित छापेमारी और गिरफ्तारियों के अलावा इस दिशा में कोई भी सार्थक प्रयास नहीं हुए हैं। टीवी पर एक कार्यक्रम के दौरान मैं स्वास्थ्य उप मंत्री को यह कहते सुनकर अचंभित रह गया कि समस्या यह है कि स्वास्थ्य राज्यों के अधीन विषय है और वे उपयुक्त कार्रवाई करने से सामान्यतया बचते हैं। इस प्रकार के बचकाने बयान से साफ हो जाता है कि सरकार मिलावटखोरों के खिलाफ कार्रवाई में अक्षम क्यों है? मुझे इसमें कोई कारण नजर नहीं आता कि स्वास्थ्य और परिवार कल्याण मंत्रालय राज्य सरकारों के साथ मिलकर इस खतरनाक प्रवृत्ति पर अंकुश न लगा पाए। मिलावटखोर व्यापारियों के खिलाफ जबरदस्त और व्यापक अभियान चलाए जाने की फौरी आवश्यकता है। अक्सर मिलावट किसान के स्तर से शुरू होती है। यह सही समय है कि इसके लिए किसानों पर भी शिकंजा कसा जाए, क्योंकि इस यथार्थ से मुंह नहींमोड़ा जा सकता कि लालच किसानों और व्यापारियों को खाद्य पदार्र्थो को जहरीला बनाने की ओर ले जा रहा है। इसीलिए मौजूदा कानूनों को कड़ा बनाकर मिलावटखोरों के लिए उम्र कैद और फांसी तक के प्रावधान करने चाहिए।
नवगठित भारतीय खाद्य सुरक्षा और मानक प्राधिकरण बड़े पैमाने पर मिलावट का मूकदर्शक नहीं बना रह सकता। यदि इसे नए कानून और मानक निर्धारित करने में समय भी लगेगा तो भी यह पहले से लागू खाद्य मिलावट रोकथाम अधिनियम के प्रावधानों का इस्तेमाल करते हुए मिलावट को आपराधिक कृत्य ठहरा सकता है और मौजूदा तंत्र को इसके अनुरूप कार्य करने को बाध्य कर सकता है। सवाल यह है कि हमारे देश का खाद्य सुरक्षा और मानक प्राधिकरण कब तक अपेक्षित कार्रवाई करने से बचता रहेगा? अब यह भी आवश्यक हो गया है कि खाद्य और उपभोक्ता मामलों के मंत्रालय के साथ-साथ खाद्य व कृषि मंत्रालय मिलावट के खिलाफ लोगों को सचेत करने के लिए संयुक्त अभियान छेड़े। कारगर कार्रवाई के लिए संबंधित मंत्रालय के सम्मलित प्रयासों की आवश्यकता है। मैं यह समझने में विफल हूं कि जब प्रधानमंत्री तमाम व्यापारिक गतिविधियों के लिए मंत्रियों के समूह का गठन कर सकते हैं तो लोगों के लिए स्वास्थ्यपूर्ण और सुरक्षित भोजन उपलब्ध कराने के लिए ऐसा क्यों नहीं कर सकते?
From: Dainik Jagran, New Delhi, July 30, 2009
Jul 30, 2009
Jul 27, 2009
India succumbs to Asean. More than Asean pressure, India keen to open up flood gates to farm commodity imports
After the Indo-US Nuclear treaty, international trade is what the UPA-2 has made it a prestige issue. The Union Cabinet last week cleared the way for signing the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Asean countries. And this happened depite serious reservations voiced by the Defence Minister A K Anthony, the Law Minister Verappa Moily, and their colleague Mr Vayalar Ravi.
The Kerala government has also protested against the decision to go ahead with India-Asean FTA. You can read the new report at http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/26/stories/2009072654060400.htm
Anyway, you have to read this in conjunction with another report pertaining to WTO. The Times of India (June 19, 2009) under the headline Govt may dilute stand at WTO didn't come as a surprise to all of us who have following UPA's stand on international trade agreements. The Washington dated report said: India has indicated that it may dilute its stand on market access for foreign farm products in an effort to breathe new life into the WTO Doha Development Round trade talks that were stalled due to New Delhi's previously strong opposition on the issue.
Well, we all know that Anand Sharma has been inducted as Commerce Minister with the specific purpose of
getting the Doha Round passed without any more hiccups. Mr Anand Sharma is faithfully on the assigned job.
The India-Asean FTA negotiations were held up for nearly two years, and was to be signed in Dec 2008. The Summit to be held in Thailand was postponed to February 2009, and by that time India was getting into the election mode. The UPA therefore deferred any decision on it. Returning back to power, the UPA-2 minus the left parties feels comfortable to sign in an unjust agreement. What had held up the negotiations were objections from Indonesia and Malaysia which wanted India to cut tariff on items like crude palm oil, pepper, tea, coffee and refined palm oil.
Strange is't it that smaller countries like Indonesia and Malaysia can hold up negotiations with India? They know what they want. But I doubt if India knows what is good for its national interests. Earlier, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had given in to the demand of Malaysia and Vietnam to lower tariffs on palm oil and spices, respectively.
Mr Anthony's concerns too related to the influx of these commodities into Kerala, which could play havoc with the State's economy. According to him, the agreement will adversely impact workforce employed in traditional sectors like coir, marine products, cashew industry, pepper and natural rubber. Anyway, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is learnt to have downplayed the threat using the China card. Sources told me that he listened to the objections raised by Mr Anthony and Mr Moily but is believed to have impressed upon them the urgent need to sign this agreeement in the asbsence of which China will grab the Asean market.
The Prime Minister as we all know is a votary for the so called free trade. I remember at the time of the Indo-Asean negotiations, he had before a round of negotiations held in Kaula Lumpur, told the Indian negotiating team to "just go and sign". This was unusual considering normally the Cabinet tells the negotiators the upper limit to be kept in mind while negotiating, as to how much can be 'sacrificed' during negotiations, but the negotiators were left speechless when they were told to "just go and sign."
I doubt if the UPA President Sonia Gandhi knows this. I think the nation has forgotten that only a few years back Sonia Gandhi had written a letter to the Prime Minister (that was deliberately leaked to the media) telling him of the dangers of accepting the agreement, and the damage it would cause to Indian agriculture and food security.
Indian agriculture is surely under an unprecedented attack from both both within and outside the country. You have already seen my earlier blog on Tamil Nadu government's decision to bring in a new legislation barring the non-agricultural graduates (including agricultural graduates who graduated from outside the State) to train and educate the farmers. This is ostensibly to stop the spread of organic farming and to uproot the growing opposition to the spread of GM crops. In Andhra Pradesh, the government is bringing in a cooperative system for farmers which actually would push them out of farming. We will talk about it later.
Thanks to the efforts of successive government's, Indian farmers are being pushed out of agriculture. This is what the World Bank had been suggesting for long. The India-Asean FTA is only one of the means to destroy domestic agriculture. You have a number of such regional agreements in offing. Watch out for this space.
The Kerala government has also protested against the decision to go ahead with India-Asean FTA. You can read the new report at http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/26/stories/2009072654060400.htm
Anyway, you have to read this in conjunction with another report pertaining to WTO. The Times of India (June 19, 2009) under the headline Govt may dilute stand at WTO didn't come as a surprise to all of us who have following UPA's stand on international trade agreements. The Washington dated report said: India has indicated that it may dilute its stand on market access for foreign farm products in an effort to breathe new life into the WTO Doha Development Round trade talks that were stalled due to New Delhi's previously strong opposition on the issue.
Well, we all know that Anand Sharma has been inducted as Commerce Minister with the specific purpose of
getting the Doha Round passed without any more hiccups. Mr Anand Sharma is faithfully on the assigned job.
The India-Asean FTA negotiations were held up for nearly two years, and was to be signed in Dec 2008. The Summit to be held in Thailand was postponed to February 2009, and by that time India was getting into the election mode. The UPA therefore deferred any decision on it. Returning back to power, the UPA-2 minus the left parties feels comfortable to sign in an unjust agreement. What had held up the negotiations were objections from Indonesia and Malaysia which wanted India to cut tariff on items like crude palm oil, pepper, tea, coffee and refined palm oil.
Strange is't it that smaller countries like Indonesia and Malaysia can hold up negotiations with India? They know what they want. But I doubt if India knows what is good for its national interests. Earlier, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had given in to the demand of Malaysia and Vietnam to lower tariffs on palm oil and spices, respectively.
Mr Anthony's concerns too related to the influx of these commodities into Kerala, which could play havoc with the State's economy. According to him, the agreement will adversely impact workforce employed in traditional sectors like coir, marine products, cashew industry, pepper and natural rubber. Anyway, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is learnt to have downplayed the threat using the China card. Sources told me that he listened to the objections raised by Mr Anthony and Mr Moily but is believed to have impressed upon them the urgent need to sign this agreeement in the asbsence of which China will grab the Asean market.
The Prime Minister as we all know is a votary for the so called free trade. I remember at the time of the Indo-Asean negotiations, he had before a round of negotiations held in Kaula Lumpur, told the Indian negotiating team to "just go and sign". This was unusual considering normally the Cabinet tells the negotiators the upper limit to be kept in mind while negotiating, as to how much can be 'sacrificed' during negotiations, but the negotiators were left speechless when they were told to "just go and sign."
I doubt if the UPA President Sonia Gandhi knows this. I think the nation has forgotten that only a few years back Sonia Gandhi had written a letter to the Prime Minister (that was deliberately leaked to the media) telling him of the dangers of accepting the agreement, and the damage it would cause to Indian agriculture and food security.
Indian agriculture is surely under an unprecedented attack from both both within and outside the country. You have already seen my earlier blog on Tamil Nadu government's decision to bring in a new legislation barring the non-agricultural graduates (including agricultural graduates who graduated from outside the State) to train and educate the farmers. This is ostensibly to stop the spread of organic farming and to uproot the growing opposition to the spread of GM crops. In Andhra Pradesh, the government is bringing in a cooperative system for farmers which actually would push them out of farming. We will talk about it later.
Thanks to the efforts of successive government's, Indian farmers are being pushed out of agriculture. This is what the World Bank had been suggesting for long. The India-Asean FTA is only one of the means to destroy domestic agriculture. You have a number of such regional agreements in offing. Watch out for this space.
Jul 24, 2009
Tamil Nadu introduces a draconian Bill to bar non-agricultural graduates from advising farmers
Step-by-step the agribusiness industry is strengthening control over agriculture. The industry knows that if it has to take complete control over Indian agriculture, before driving out Indian farmers from agriculture, it has to work towards removing all the impediments that comes in its way. I mean it has to ensure that all factors that dissuade farmers from following the corporate mantra have to be first removed. The first and foremost are the naturalists, the new emerging breed of organic practitioners, including the religious heads who talk and preach protection of the environment and promote sustainable farming methods. This is followed by numerous groups and organisations, including activists, who have been engaged in low-external input sustainable farming practices.
These are the people who have come in the way of corporate profits. And since their influence is gaining ground, and more and more farmers are realising their mistake, the folly they committed in blindly accepting the intensive farming technology that has played havoc with agriculture and pushed them deeper and deeper into a terrible agrarian crisis, these people must be barred from interacting with farmers.
Moreover with the dimnishing credibility of agricultural scientists, agricultural universities are becoming redundant and the demand for disinvesting these universities is also growing. The agricultural universities and the agribusiness industry have therefore joined hands to seek a ban on any 'outside' effort to influence farmers. The Tamil Nadu government (in southern India) has brought in a new draconian agriculture Bill that bars anyone who is not an agricultural graduate or an agricultural professional as recognised by the Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Council to render agriculture service within the State.
Only those who hold an agriculture degree granted by the University of Chennai, Annamalai University and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University have been recognised under this legislation. Well, this means that even people like me who are qualified in agriculture (but not from Tamil Nadu) cannot address a training workshop for farmers in Tamil Nadu. Most of the scientists working with the ICAR institutes or agricultural universities outside the State would also be similarly barred.
Noted agricultural scientist Dr M S Swaminathan, who escapes the provisions of this legislation since he did his graduation from Coimbatore (at that time it was not an university), will have to redesign field activities of the M S Swaminathan Foundation in Chennai in a manner that only the staff members who have an agricultural degree from Tamil Nadu are sent to advise/interact with farmers. Othwerwise, as my colleague Ramasamy Selvam informs, anyone violating the provisions of this proposed legislation will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or imprisonment for six months.
Here is the Indian Express report on the agricultural Bill when it was introduced in Tamil Nadu Assembly. On the last day of the State Assembly session yesterday, 30 Bills were passed without any discussion, and this Bill was one of them.
New agriculture Bill introduced.
CHENNAI: June 24: Agriculture Minister Veerapandi S Arumugam on Tuesday introduced in the State Assembly a Bill to regulate agriculture practice in Tamil Nadu. This legislation provides for establishing a council called Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Council (TNSAC).
The Bill said at present, there was no law to provide for the regulation of agricultural practice in the State. As per the Bill, every agricultural institution which grants a recognised agricultural qualification should furnish details about their courses of study and examinations to be undergone in order to obtain such qualification.
The TNSAC may, by regulation, specify the minimum standards of education required for granting agricultural qualifications by the agricultural institutions. The Council shall maintain a register by name The Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Practitioners Register which would have the names of all persons who possess agricultural qualifications.
The Bill further said no person other than a person whose name is borne on the register should practice as Agricultural consultant within the State or render agricultural services.
For preparing this register, the government shall, constitute a registration tribunal and appoint a Registrar.
The agricultural degrees granted by University of Chennai, Annamalai University and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University have been listed as recognised agricultural qualifications under this legislation.
These are the people who have come in the way of corporate profits. And since their influence is gaining ground, and more and more farmers are realising their mistake, the folly they committed in blindly accepting the intensive farming technology that has played havoc with agriculture and pushed them deeper and deeper into a terrible agrarian crisis, these people must be barred from interacting with farmers.
Moreover with the dimnishing credibility of agricultural scientists, agricultural universities are becoming redundant and the demand for disinvesting these universities is also growing. The agricultural universities and the agribusiness industry have therefore joined hands to seek a ban on any 'outside' effort to influence farmers. The Tamil Nadu government (in southern India) has brought in a new draconian agriculture Bill that bars anyone who is not an agricultural graduate or an agricultural professional as recognised by the Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Council to render agriculture service within the State.
Only those who hold an agriculture degree granted by the University of Chennai, Annamalai University and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University have been recognised under this legislation. Well, this means that even people like me who are qualified in agriculture (but not from Tamil Nadu) cannot address a training workshop for farmers in Tamil Nadu. Most of the scientists working with the ICAR institutes or agricultural universities outside the State would also be similarly barred.
Noted agricultural scientist Dr M S Swaminathan, who escapes the provisions of this legislation since he did his graduation from Coimbatore (at that time it was not an university), will have to redesign field activities of the M S Swaminathan Foundation in Chennai in a manner that only the staff members who have an agricultural degree from Tamil Nadu are sent to advise/interact with farmers. Othwerwise, as my colleague Ramasamy Selvam informs, anyone violating the provisions of this proposed legislation will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or imprisonment for six months.
Here is the Indian Express report on the agricultural Bill when it was introduced in Tamil Nadu Assembly. On the last day of the State Assembly session yesterday, 30 Bills were passed without any discussion, and this Bill was one of them.
New agriculture Bill introduced.
CHENNAI: June 24: Agriculture Minister Veerapandi S Arumugam on Tuesday introduced in the State Assembly a Bill to regulate agriculture practice in Tamil Nadu. This legislation provides for establishing a council called Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Council (TNSAC).
The Bill said at present, there was no law to provide for the regulation of agricultural practice in the State. As per the Bill, every agricultural institution which grants a recognised agricultural qualification should furnish details about their courses of study and examinations to be undergone in order to obtain such qualification.
The TNSAC may, by regulation, specify the minimum standards of education required for granting agricultural qualifications by the agricultural institutions. The Council shall maintain a register by name The Tamil Nadu State Agricultural Practitioners Register which would have the names of all persons who possess agricultural qualifications.
The Bill further said no person other than a person whose name is borne on the register should practice as Agricultural consultant within the State or render agricultural services.
For preparing this register, the government shall, constitute a registration tribunal and appoint a Registrar.
The agricultural degrees granted by University of Chennai, Annamalai University and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University have been listed as recognised agricultural qualifications under this legislation.
Jul 23, 2009
Who needs Special Agricultural Zones?
Somebody said the other day that every calamity provides an opportunity. I thought probably what it meant was like after incessant rains in the Himalayas and the resulting floods in the Indo-Gangetic plains, and after the damage has been done, the surging water leaves behind a layer of fertile soil. The calamity is over, and farmers can now look forward to a highly enriched soil courtesy flood waters.
I now realise that probably the scenario that I depicted is not what it actually means. At the time of the 2008 global food crisis, I am sure you would have observed that those who support the free trade regime, spearheaded by the director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), began justifying an early completion of the contentious Doha Development Round as the answer. A few months later, when economic meltdown began, the orchestra began chanting the mantra of free and liberalised trade as the way to emerge out of the global economic crisis.
While the rich and industrialised countries began to take a step back from the principles of liberalised trade by throwing in 'protection' measures, the developing countries were asked to further open up if they have to ensure that the negative impact of an economic slowdown is minimised.
How true. Every calamity does provide an opportunity. But the more important question is: an opportunity for whom?
Let us now zoom in to India. The continuing dryspell over the northwest and central parts of India, and the spectre of a looming drought, too provides an opportunity. For several weeks now, the media has focused on the erratic monsoons and tracked the dry days. I am often asked a question, that does irriate me, if the rural economy dips the FMCG sector which sells consumer durables is going to suffer which in turn would reflect on the national economy. Not many in the media are however concerned about the fate of millions of small and marginal farmers and agricultural workers who are languishing in a drought-like situation.
I was the other day on a TV show where a car manufacturer was being interviewed. The question asked to him was that will the continuing dryspell reduce the sale of cars in the rural areas. What a stupid question, I thought. When will the media began to to see economics beyond the sale of consumer goods? When will we understand economics as if the human beings matter?
The continuing dryspell and the spectre of drought is making way for another opportunity. I find the talk of setting up Special Agricultural Zones (on the lines of Special Economic Zones) gaining momentum. The Hindustan Times today carries a full page selling the idea. As part of the series Inspired India, it has even shown an artist's impression (under the head Ploughing for Profit) of what a Special Agricultural Zone would look like. The idea being that these specially demarcated areas would protect fertile lands from being lost, and focus on providing infrastructure like roads, markets and storage facilities in one compact area thereby making farming profitable again.
It sounds perfectly alright till you begin to see the politics behind it. Of course the inspiration comes from China, which according to the HT report has framed policies towards setting up Special Agricultural Zones. each zone will have first-class infrastructure, technology and access to markets. The proposed zones are already attracting foreign investment, from companies interested in helping set it up and from agro-professionals.
Well, I am sure you now know what I am trying to drive at. The Special Agricultural Zones in China are already attracting foreign investment. So it is quite obvious for whom the spectre of drought provides an opportunity.
Nevertheless, in a country where 60 per cent of the population is directly dependent upon agriculture, setting up of Special Agricultural Zones would mean that some islands of farm prosperity would be created in a sea of deprivation. There would be two kinds of agriculture -- the industrial and business model receiving bulk of the Budget incentives every year, and the rest of the countryside left to fend for themselves. For this huge mass of subsistence farmers, the NREGA will act as a lifeline. Already we know that in States like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, more than 60 per cent of the NREGA workforce comprise of farmers with small landholdings.
Special Agricultural Zones in any case would not be following crop models that bank upon sustainability. No business house or agribusiness firm is going to invest in sustainable farming practices. For the business, profit is the motive. Profit will come from intensive farming. And intensive farming will leave behind an ecological cost and social cost, which the poor farmer is expected to take care of. In other words, the Special Agricultural zones would be rendered barren and infertile after 4-5 years and since the land is pooled by the farmers as a cooperative, the companies will have nothing to lose.
I sometimes wonder why are our economists and planners so short-sighted. Why can't we look beyond corporate models for economic growth and development? Why can't we ensure that the entire rural India is turned into a Special Agricultural Zone? Is it difficult? Certainly not. All it requires is a visionary approach, which unfortunately is missing in the present breeds of economists and planners.
Several decades back, a semi-illiterate politician became the Chief Minister of Punjab. Not many of us would recall the name of Lachman Singh. He became Chief Minister for a short duration of about six months. He knew that he wouldn't last long, but was keen to enshrine his name in Punjab's history. Soon after taking over, he drove to Kharar (close to Chandigarh) to meet the distinguished agriculturist and administrator Dr M S Randhawa who lived in the outskirts of Chandigarh on his farm.
Dr Randhawa had once told me (he died some two decades back) that Lachman Singh seeked his advise as to what he could do so that he is remembered by the future generations. Dr Randhawa told him that he should provide for linking every village in the State with mandis (rural markets). Punjab farmers were reaping good harvest after the advent of Green Revolution, but much of their produce was not reaching the market for want of rural roads. If Lachman Singh could provide for a network of rural roads connecting the markets with the farms, Dr Randhawa's view was that it would help in sustaining the farm prosperity.
Lachman Singh did the rest. He not only provided the roadmap but also made financial provisions.
I am so glad that Dr Randhawa thought of entire Punjab as an agricultural zone. Imagine if he would have talked about a couple of Special Agricultural Zones within Punjab, the country wouldn't have achieved food self-sufficiency. More than 50 per cent of the country's food surplus comes from Punjab, and much of the credit for making that possible would go to Dr Randhawa and of course the political understanding exhibited by an illiterate politician. You don't have to be 'educated' to be wise.
I wonder when will we try to turn the recurring spectre of drought as an opportunity for the entire farming community. Treating the entire countryside as a Special Agricultural Zone is the best way forward.
I learn that the Uttarakhand government is planning to set up Special Agricultural Zones. I am aware that the class of visionaries like Dr Randhawa have become extinct, and so wiser sense is not prevailing. Uttarkhand's former Chief Minister Mr Khanduri had started a wrong precedence, and I fear other Chief Ministers will take it up quickly. There can be nothing more tragic than this.
Why such destructive things happen in the name of development? Well, let us not forget, it is money that makes the mare go. #
I now realise that probably the scenario that I depicted is not what it actually means. At the time of the 2008 global food crisis, I am sure you would have observed that those who support the free trade regime, spearheaded by the director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), began justifying an early completion of the contentious Doha Development Round as the answer. A few months later, when economic meltdown began, the orchestra began chanting the mantra of free and liberalised trade as the way to emerge out of the global economic crisis.
While the rich and industrialised countries began to take a step back from the principles of liberalised trade by throwing in 'protection' measures, the developing countries were asked to further open up if they have to ensure that the negative impact of an economic slowdown is minimised.
How true. Every calamity does provide an opportunity. But the more important question is: an opportunity for whom?
Let us now zoom in to India. The continuing dryspell over the northwest and central parts of India, and the spectre of a looming drought, too provides an opportunity. For several weeks now, the media has focused on the erratic monsoons and tracked the dry days. I am often asked a question, that does irriate me, if the rural economy dips the FMCG sector which sells consumer durables is going to suffer which in turn would reflect on the national economy. Not many in the media are however concerned about the fate of millions of small and marginal farmers and agricultural workers who are languishing in a drought-like situation.
I was the other day on a TV show where a car manufacturer was being interviewed. The question asked to him was that will the continuing dryspell reduce the sale of cars in the rural areas. What a stupid question, I thought. When will the media began to to see economics beyond the sale of consumer goods? When will we understand economics as if the human beings matter?
The continuing dryspell and the spectre of drought is making way for another opportunity. I find the talk of setting up Special Agricultural Zones (on the lines of Special Economic Zones) gaining momentum. The Hindustan Times today carries a full page selling the idea. As part of the series Inspired India, it has even shown an artist's impression (under the head Ploughing for Profit) of what a Special Agricultural Zone would look like. The idea being that these specially demarcated areas would protect fertile lands from being lost, and focus on providing infrastructure like roads, markets and storage facilities in one compact area thereby making farming profitable again.
It sounds perfectly alright till you begin to see the politics behind it. Of course the inspiration comes from China, which according to the HT report has framed policies towards setting up Special Agricultural Zones. each zone will have first-class infrastructure, technology and access to markets. The proposed zones are already attracting foreign investment, from companies interested in helping set it up and from agro-professionals.
Well, I am sure you now know what I am trying to drive at. The Special Agricultural Zones in China are already attracting foreign investment. So it is quite obvious for whom the spectre of drought provides an opportunity.
Nevertheless, in a country where 60 per cent of the population is directly dependent upon agriculture, setting up of Special Agricultural Zones would mean that some islands of farm prosperity would be created in a sea of deprivation. There would be two kinds of agriculture -- the industrial and business model receiving bulk of the Budget incentives every year, and the rest of the countryside left to fend for themselves. For this huge mass of subsistence farmers, the NREGA will act as a lifeline. Already we know that in States like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, more than 60 per cent of the NREGA workforce comprise of farmers with small landholdings.
Special Agricultural Zones in any case would not be following crop models that bank upon sustainability. No business house or agribusiness firm is going to invest in sustainable farming practices. For the business, profit is the motive. Profit will come from intensive farming. And intensive farming will leave behind an ecological cost and social cost, which the poor farmer is expected to take care of. In other words, the Special Agricultural zones would be rendered barren and infertile after 4-5 years and since the land is pooled by the farmers as a cooperative, the companies will have nothing to lose.
I sometimes wonder why are our economists and planners so short-sighted. Why can't we look beyond corporate models for economic growth and development? Why can't we ensure that the entire rural India is turned into a Special Agricultural Zone? Is it difficult? Certainly not. All it requires is a visionary approach, which unfortunately is missing in the present breeds of economists and planners.
Several decades back, a semi-illiterate politician became the Chief Minister of Punjab. Not many of us would recall the name of Lachman Singh. He became Chief Minister for a short duration of about six months. He knew that he wouldn't last long, but was keen to enshrine his name in Punjab's history. Soon after taking over, he drove to Kharar (close to Chandigarh) to meet the distinguished agriculturist and administrator Dr M S Randhawa who lived in the outskirts of Chandigarh on his farm.
Dr Randhawa had once told me (he died some two decades back) that Lachman Singh seeked his advise as to what he could do so that he is remembered by the future generations. Dr Randhawa told him that he should provide for linking every village in the State with mandis (rural markets). Punjab farmers were reaping good harvest after the advent of Green Revolution, but much of their produce was not reaching the market for want of rural roads. If Lachman Singh could provide for a network of rural roads connecting the markets with the farms, Dr Randhawa's view was that it would help in sustaining the farm prosperity.
Lachman Singh did the rest. He not only provided the roadmap but also made financial provisions.
I am so glad that Dr Randhawa thought of entire Punjab as an agricultural zone. Imagine if he would have talked about a couple of Special Agricultural Zones within Punjab, the country wouldn't have achieved food self-sufficiency. More than 50 per cent of the country's food surplus comes from Punjab, and much of the credit for making that possible would go to Dr Randhawa and of course the political understanding exhibited by an illiterate politician. You don't have to be 'educated' to be wise.
I wonder when will we try to turn the recurring spectre of drought as an opportunity for the entire farming community. Treating the entire countryside as a Special Agricultural Zone is the best way forward.
I learn that the Uttarakhand government is planning to set up Special Agricultural Zones. I am aware that the class of visionaries like Dr Randhawa have become extinct, and so wiser sense is not prevailing. Uttarkhand's former Chief Minister Mr Khanduri had started a wrong precedence, and I fear other Chief Ministers will take it up quickly. There can be nothing more tragic than this.
Why such destructive things happen in the name of development? Well, let us not forget, it is money that makes the mare go. #
Jul 20, 2009
Serving poison in every plate
When it premiered in February this year, the documentary film 'Poison on the Platter' directed by Ajay Kanchan and presented by Mahesh Bhatt, opened to mixed reviews. Devinder Sharma, a food and trade policy expert based in New Delhi, reviews the film against the backdrop of the controversies surrounding Genetically Modified (GM) food in India
[Note from Editor: The Express Biotech viewpoint is that as the experts in the film say, we are not against GM foods per se. Like any new technology and product, GM foods need to be studied longer and in more clinical settings to gauge their long term impact on the health of consumers. Not conducting these trials with due diligence could see future generations suffering from disease conditions unknown to us today. We invite counterpoints to this article and hope to start a meaningful debate on this topic. Do send in your articles/viewpoints to viveka.r@expressindia.com]
This is your opportunity to make your voice felt.
Here is the article:
Poison on the platter
Express Pharma
http://www.expresspharmaonline.com/20090630/expressbiotech07.shtml
It couldn’t have been better timed. Mahesh Bhatt’s powerful documentary film Poison on the Platter comes at a time when India’s first genetically modified (GM) food crop – Bt brinjal – awaits commercialization. A few more months of sponsored research trials, and an unwanted and unhealthy food crop would be ready for its first serving.
Mahesh Bhatt has awakened the nation to the emerging dangers from consuming GM foods. Piecing together some of the startling cases of food poisoning, which for obvious reasons the GM food industry doesn’t want to talk about, the film does force the people to think. It provides thought for GM food.
While the jury is still not out about the safety of GM foods, the biotech industry is in a tearing hurry to force it down the throat of gullible consumers. After the European Union resisted the take-over of the food chain by the GM industry, especially in the aftermath of the disastrous impact of first the mad cow disease and then the foot-and-mouth disease, the GM industry shifted its focus to developing countries. India, with a lax regulatory regime and an easily manipulative agricultural scientific system, became an easy target.
In fact, India has become the world’s biggest dustbin for GM technology. In addition to Bt cotton, and now with the likelihood of the introduction of Bt brinjal, there are some 56 crops, mostly staple foods and vegetables, are in the advanced stages of research and field trials. And this includes rice, sugarcane, soybean, tomato, cauliflower, bhindi, and potato. Poison on the Platter therefore comes as a timely warning.
What worries me is that like the cigarette industry, which kept the safety data away from public glare for several decades, the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco), which developed Bt brinjal, too is unwilling to disclose the human safety data citing confidentiality and commercial interests as the reasons. It was only after the courts intervened that the company has been forced to make public the data from research trials. The underlying message is crystal clear. The public must believe the companies. People have no right to know what they are eating.
In a way it is true. The hush-hush manner, in which the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the apex approval authority for genetically altered crops/foods, has been clearing and allowing large-scale field trials of GM crops, is enough of an indication that it is merely a rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry. Throwing all scientific norms of research and evaluation to wind, and not even bothering to analyse the toxicity data for human and animal health, it has been blindly accepting the data presented by the companies.
I wonder how the public can be a silent spectator. After all, the Bt gene in brinjal makes the fruit 1000 times more toxic than the toxins that exists in the normal sprays of Bt bio-pesticides. To say that the Bt toxin in brinjal is safe for human health, when its much-paler bio-pesticides sprays can kill insects, is certainly not palatable. Moreover, brinjal is not only cooked, it is also used raw and the toxin would remain in such cases. As I said in the film, imagine keeping a Bt brinjal in a glass container along with a few shoot borer insects that normally feed on brinjal. You will see that these insects will die. If these insects can die from feeding on Bt brinjal, I wonder what will happen when the same Bt brinjal goes into our stomach.
The company of course claims that 5 to 10 minutes of cooking kills the Bt toxin. Is it 5 minute cooking that is safe enough or do we have to go in for 10 minutes? If this is true, than shouldn’t the GEAC make it mandatory for housewives to keep thermometer in their kitchens? And what will happen if my child for instance eats raw Bt brinjal while playing around? Will he survive? Still worse, do we have adequate medical tests prescribed that can detect the damage done by Bt toxin in the human body?
Besides Bt brinjal, most of the GM crops are being promoted as an alternative to chemical pesticides. That the GM crops reduce the application of chemical pesticides too has been proven incorrect. In China, where Bt cotton was hailed as a silver-bullet for cotton farmers, a Cornell University study has shown that cotton farmers in China growing Bt crop, are actually using more pesticides and therefore incurring losses. In India too, Bt cotton has not reduced the application of pesticides.
In the United States, GM corn, soybean and cotton have reportedly led to 122 million pounds increase in pesticides usage since 1996. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) now admits that yields of GM soyabean and corn have actually fallen. The University of Nebraska and the Kansas University have also made similar conclusions.
Moreover, weed resistance to ‘herbicide-tolerant’ GM crops in the US exists in 15 million acres. At least 30 ‘super weeds’ – which cannot be controlled by any means – have developed in North America. In India, several new pests have emerged on Bt cotton. Reports of failure of Bt cotton, including hundreds of Bt cotton farmers committing suicide, have also poured in. But who cares? The GEAC goes on merrily putting its stamp of approval on company studies.
With the former Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal repeatedly asserting that the government is “pro-GM crops”, it is quite obvious as to whose interests is it promoting. The entire regulatory system therefore is eyewash, and borders on sham. The only way to see that the government-biotechnology industry nexus does not play havoc with human health is to hold the Minister as well as the GEAC members liable for any mishap. Put them behind bars if any untoward bio-safety accident takes place. Someone has to be held accountable for playing with human safety.
Make the liability clause absolutely stringent and you will see the biotechnology industry closing shop. That is what the essential message from Mahesh Bhatt’s film is. #
[Note from Editor: The Express Biotech viewpoint is that as the experts in the film say, we are not against GM foods per se. Like any new technology and product, GM foods need to be studied longer and in more clinical settings to gauge their long term impact on the health of consumers. Not conducting these trials with due diligence could see future generations suffering from disease conditions unknown to us today. We invite counterpoints to this article and hope to start a meaningful debate on this topic. Do send in your articles/viewpoints to viveka.r@expressindia.com]
This is your opportunity to make your voice felt.
Here is the article:
Poison on the platter
Express Pharma
http://www.expresspharmaonline.com/20090630/expressbiotech07.shtml
It couldn’t have been better timed. Mahesh Bhatt’s powerful documentary film Poison on the Platter comes at a time when India’s first genetically modified (GM) food crop – Bt brinjal – awaits commercialization. A few more months of sponsored research trials, and an unwanted and unhealthy food crop would be ready for its first serving.
Mahesh Bhatt has awakened the nation to the emerging dangers from consuming GM foods. Piecing together some of the startling cases of food poisoning, which for obvious reasons the GM food industry doesn’t want to talk about, the film does force the people to think. It provides thought for GM food.
While the jury is still not out about the safety of GM foods, the biotech industry is in a tearing hurry to force it down the throat of gullible consumers. After the European Union resisted the take-over of the food chain by the GM industry, especially in the aftermath of the disastrous impact of first the mad cow disease and then the foot-and-mouth disease, the GM industry shifted its focus to developing countries. India, with a lax regulatory regime and an easily manipulative agricultural scientific system, became an easy target.
In fact, India has become the world’s biggest dustbin for GM technology. In addition to Bt cotton, and now with the likelihood of the introduction of Bt brinjal, there are some 56 crops, mostly staple foods and vegetables, are in the advanced stages of research and field trials. And this includes rice, sugarcane, soybean, tomato, cauliflower, bhindi, and potato. Poison on the Platter therefore comes as a timely warning.
What worries me is that like the cigarette industry, which kept the safety data away from public glare for several decades, the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco), which developed Bt brinjal, too is unwilling to disclose the human safety data citing confidentiality and commercial interests as the reasons. It was only after the courts intervened that the company has been forced to make public the data from research trials. The underlying message is crystal clear. The public must believe the companies. People have no right to know what they are eating.
In a way it is true. The hush-hush manner, in which the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the apex approval authority for genetically altered crops/foods, has been clearing and allowing large-scale field trials of GM crops, is enough of an indication that it is merely a rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry. Throwing all scientific norms of research and evaluation to wind, and not even bothering to analyse the toxicity data for human and animal health, it has been blindly accepting the data presented by the companies.
I wonder how the public can be a silent spectator. After all, the Bt gene in brinjal makes the fruit 1000 times more toxic than the toxins that exists in the normal sprays of Bt bio-pesticides. To say that the Bt toxin in brinjal is safe for human health, when its much-paler bio-pesticides sprays can kill insects, is certainly not palatable. Moreover, brinjal is not only cooked, it is also used raw and the toxin would remain in such cases. As I said in the film, imagine keeping a Bt brinjal in a glass container along with a few shoot borer insects that normally feed on brinjal. You will see that these insects will die. If these insects can die from feeding on Bt brinjal, I wonder what will happen when the same Bt brinjal goes into our stomach.
The company of course claims that 5 to 10 minutes of cooking kills the Bt toxin. Is it 5 minute cooking that is safe enough or do we have to go in for 10 minutes? If this is true, than shouldn’t the GEAC make it mandatory for housewives to keep thermometer in their kitchens? And what will happen if my child for instance eats raw Bt brinjal while playing around? Will he survive? Still worse, do we have adequate medical tests prescribed that can detect the damage done by Bt toxin in the human body?
Besides Bt brinjal, most of the GM crops are being promoted as an alternative to chemical pesticides. That the GM crops reduce the application of chemical pesticides too has been proven incorrect. In China, where Bt cotton was hailed as a silver-bullet for cotton farmers, a Cornell University study has shown that cotton farmers in China growing Bt crop, are actually using more pesticides and therefore incurring losses. In India too, Bt cotton has not reduced the application of pesticides.
In the United States, GM corn, soybean and cotton have reportedly led to 122 million pounds increase in pesticides usage since 1996. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) now admits that yields of GM soyabean and corn have actually fallen. The University of Nebraska and the Kansas University have also made similar conclusions.
Moreover, weed resistance to ‘herbicide-tolerant’ GM crops in the US exists in 15 million acres. At least 30 ‘super weeds’ – which cannot be controlled by any means – have developed in North America. In India, several new pests have emerged on Bt cotton. Reports of failure of Bt cotton, including hundreds of Bt cotton farmers committing suicide, have also poured in. But who cares? The GEAC goes on merrily putting its stamp of approval on company studies.
With the former Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal repeatedly asserting that the government is “pro-GM crops”, it is quite obvious as to whose interests is it promoting. The entire regulatory system therefore is eyewash, and borders on sham. The only way to see that the government-biotechnology industry nexus does not play havoc with human health is to hold the Minister as well as the GEAC members liable for any mishap. Put them behind bars if any untoward bio-safety accident takes place. Someone has to be held accountable for playing with human safety.
Make the liability clause absolutely stringent and you will see the biotechnology industry closing shop. That is what the essential message from Mahesh Bhatt’s film is. #
Jul 15, 2009
"Sky is not the limit"
Delayed monsoon is keeping everyone on tenterhooks. The government is worried. Trade and business is keeping its fingers crossed. Economists are busy working out the impact on growth rate. Agricultural scientists are churning out statistics every fortnight or so about sowing and transplanting of kharif crops.
I wonder if anyone is worried about the plight of farmers.
Somehow the impression is that if the growth rate in agriculture does not dip any further than there would be hardly any impact on the overall economy. Everything is measured in terms of growth rate. It looks as if the economy is not at all related to people, as if the people don't matter.
Growth rate is not that important. What is important is the impact of the delayed monsoon on the livelihood of millions of small farmers. But is anyone really concerned about the small and marginal farmers?
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture somehow gives the impression that it is ready with a contingency plan. It has abundant stocks of crop varieties which can be sown late or which are of short duration. These claims are all bunkum. They hardly have any stocks of seeds of short-duration varieties. In fact, it is the Ministry for Food and Agriculture which has over the years destroyed the ability of farmers to cope with weather aberrations.
Short-duration and drought resistant crop varieties have been replaced by hybrids at the initiation of the government agencies. Don't blame the farmers. They had the traditional knowledge to combat the drought, but over the years agricultural scientists have made them so dependent upon the seed industries and the intensive farming systems that they have either forgotten or have lost the ability to cope with drought-proof mechanisms.
It is in this light that I would like to share with you all an excellent article by P V Satheesh in today's Hindustan Times. This article should serve as an eye-opener for our scientists, economists and planners.
Sky is not the limit
P.V. Satheesh
15 July 2009
As the shadows of drought lengthen across the subcontinent, the faint voices of apocalypse are growing louder by the day. That they emanate mainly from news channels and not from well-informed agricultural scientists or meteorologists is quite interesting. As the comic shots of farmers looking skywards with their palms shading their eyes — popularised by the Films Division of India 60 years ago — start crowding the 24x7 screens, it is apparent that they are smelling a big, dramatic story.
There is very little of this sense of imminent catastrophe in the villages where I live, at the centre of India’s semi-arid belt. Why is it that farmers most likely to be affected by drought don’t sound half as hopeless as the TV channels? The answer lies in their worldview of weather, water and warnings.
When India’s scientist-in-chief said on a news channel that the spread of the monsoon is more important than the volume of monsoons, the channel suddenly discovered a big truth.
But my illiterate 60-year-old neighbour, Musaligari Laxmappa smiled and said, “This is what we have been saying for several generations. How come the television never gets wiser through farmers’ wisdom and gets its gyan only through telegenic farming scientists?”
Though the gyan of Laxmappas and their ilk has not brought them closer to the news channels, it has surely given them an equanimity of sorts.
It is because their knowledge of agriculture keeps them by and large insured against the vagaries of the monsoon and the despair it produces. In the Deccan, the farmers who still defy the Green Revolution model of agriculture, and have stood by their traditional agriculture, know how to mix and match their crops to suit early rains, late rains and right-time rains.
They also know how to cope with less rain and more rain. Even within the varieties of jwar that they grow, they have some that mature within three months and hence can do with an early spell of rain and survive. They also have varieties that take six months to grow and mature to cope patiently with the madness of the monsoon.
If the first six weeks of the season see no rains, they dip into their seed baskets and bring out bajra that can be planted late into the season and still flourish. If all this fails, they plant one of the hardiest of crops, horsegram. Their agricultural diversity is extremely climate-compliant. And they are despair-protected, since they see farming as a way of producing crops and not as a sensex- or GDP-booster.
In the dry regions of the Deccan, Rajasthan, Kutch and Madhya Pradesh, farmers have always pursued their agriculture while defying the climate Cassandras. Without irrigation, in high temperatures, in chilling winters, they have provided the country with an amazing array of millets, pulses and oilseeds.
Some of these crops flourish with excessive rains, some survive scanty rainfall, while most can bravely withstand water stress. In fact each of these crops has a niche use related to the culture, festivals and rituals of the regions. This is what keeps them going against the assault of markets and the science of monoculture.
In some ways this continuity of tradition has also emerged as an answer to the latest crisis: climate change. That these crops are not water-guzzlers like rice and wheat and hence can grow without irrigation is their big plus point. Some of these crops can fix organic carbon into the soil thus responding to the impact of climate change. Thus, they become climate-asset crops, unlike rice and wheat, that some describe as the causal factors for a climate crisis.
When the genetic engineering industry makes daily incursions into the Prime Minister’s Climate Action Plan, promising saline-resistant rice varieties to fight the probable rise in sea-levels, it might be sobering to know that farmers in the Sunderbans already have more than a dozen such varieties.
So in our current anxiety about drought, we will do well to learn from the deep ecological and cultural knowledge of our agricultural communities.
P.V. Satheesh is Director, Deccan Development Society, Hyderabad
I wonder if anyone is worried about the plight of farmers.
Somehow the impression is that if the growth rate in agriculture does not dip any further than there would be hardly any impact on the overall economy. Everything is measured in terms of growth rate. It looks as if the economy is not at all related to people, as if the people don't matter.
Growth rate is not that important. What is important is the impact of the delayed monsoon on the livelihood of millions of small farmers. But is anyone really concerned about the small and marginal farmers?
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture somehow gives the impression that it is ready with a contingency plan. It has abundant stocks of crop varieties which can be sown late or which are of short duration. These claims are all bunkum. They hardly have any stocks of seeds of short-duration varieties. In fact, it is the Ministry for Food and Agriculture which has over the years destroyed the ability of farmers to cope with weather aberrations.
Short-duration and drought resistant crop varieties have been replaced by hybrids at the initiation of the government agencies. Don't blame the farmers. They had the traditional knowledge to combat the drought, but over the years agricultural scientists have made them so dependent upon the seed industries and the intensive farming systems that they have either forgotten or have lost the ability to cope with drought-proof mechanisms.
It is in this light that I would like to share with you all an excellent article by P V Satheesh in today's Hindustan Times. This article should serve as an eye-opener for our scientists, economists and planners.
Sky is not the limit
P.V. Satheesh
15 July 2009
As the shadows of drought lengthen across the subcontinent, the faint voices of apocalypse are growing louder by the day. That they emanate mainly from news channels and not from well-informed agricultural scientists or meteorologists is quite interesting. As the comic shots of farmers looking skywards with their palms shading their eyes — popularised by the Films Division of India 60 years ago — start crowding the 24x7 screens, it is apparent that they are smelling a big, dramatic story.
There is very little of this sense of imminent catastrophe in the villages where I live, at the centre of India’s semi-arid belt. Why is it that farmers most likely to be affected by drought don’t sound half as hopeless as the TV channels? The answer lies in their worldview of weather, water and warnings.
When India’s scientist-in-chief said on a news channel that the spread of the monsoon is more important than the volume of monsoons, the channel suddenly discovered a big truth.
But my illiterate 60-year-old neighbour, Musaligari Laxmappa smiled and said, “This is what we have been saying for several generations. How come the television never gets wiser through farmers’ wisdom and gets its gyan only through telegenic farming scientists?”
Though the gyan of Laxmappas and their ilk has not brought them closer to the news channels, it has surely given them an equanimity of sorts.
It is because their knowledge of agriculture keeps them by and large insured against the vagaries of the monsoon and the despair it produces. In the Deccan, the farmers who still defy the Green Revolution model of agriculture, and have stood by their traditional agriculture, know how to mix and match their crops to suit early rains, late rains and right-time rains.
They also know how to cope with less rain and more rain. Even within the varieties of jwar that they grow, they have some that mature within three months and hence can do with an early spell of rain and survive. They also have varieties that take six months to grow and mature to cope patiently with the madness of the monsoon.
If the first six weeks of the season see no rains, they dip into their seed baskets and bring out bajra that can be planted late into the season and still flourish. If all this fails, they plant one of the hardiest of crops, horsegram. Their agricultural diversity is extremely climate-compliant. And they are despair-protected, since they see farming as a way of producing crops and not as a sensex- or GDP-booster.
In the dry regions of the Deccan, Rajasthan, Kutch and Madhya Pradesh, farmers have always pursued their agriculture while defying the climate Cassandras. Without irrigation, in high temperatures, in chilling winters, they have provided the country with an amazing array of millets, pulses and oilseeds.
Some of these crops flourish with excessive rains, some survive scanty rainfall, while most can bravely withstand water stress. In fact each of these crops has a niche use related to the culture, festivals and rituals of the regions. This is what keeps them going against the assault of markets and the science of monoculture.
In some ways this continuity of tradition has also emerged as an answer to the latest crisis: climate change. That these crops are not water-guzzlers like rice and wheat and hence can grow without irrigation is their big plus point. Some of these crops can fix organic carbon into the soil thus responding to the impact of climate change. Thus, they become climate-asset crops, unlike rice and wheat, that some describe as the causal factors for a climate crisis.
When the genetic engineering industry makes daily incursions into the Prime Minister’s Climate Action Plan, promising saline-resistant rice varieties to fight the probable rise in sea-levels, it might be sobering to know that farmers in the Sunderbans already have more than a dozen such varieties.
So in our current anxiety about drought, we will do well to learn from the deep ecological and cultural knowledge of our agricultural communities.
P.V. Satheesh is Director, Deccan Development Society, Hyderabad
Jul 12, 2009
The way to fight hunger -- lessons to ensure Right to Food
Yesterday, I attended a meeting in New Delhi of Right to Food campaign called in primarily to endorse a very weak and hastily produced draft. At first glance, the Right to Food Act 2009 -- the draft proposal -- looked more like a government proposal. I was utterly disappointed to read the draft, and I did walk up to the stage to convey my displeasure.
There were many in the audience who shared my displeasure. Some of them had stood up and raised their concern. I am glad that at the end (I was later told) the group decided to have a relook and formulated a fresh drafting committee. I only hope the Right to Food campaign, which has done some excellent work in recent past, stands up to the challenge and first widens its approach by including people who have been working on hunger-related issues for long, and secondly brings diverse voices and perspectives that can look at hunger beyond the Public Distribution System.
If you have read my earlier blog entitled Can India make hunger history? (July 10, 2009) I have raised the issues that need to be addressed if we really aim at achieveing Food-for-All. We will need to address the policy initiatives which actually lead to hunger and deprivation. Even if it calls for a paradigm shift in our approach, we must state that explicitly. There is no reason for the civil society to shy away from the onerous task by saying that we have to only take care of entitlements. I mean I can understand the government trying to say so, but that a section of the civil society also trying to behave like the government is something that I am sure we all cannot fathom.
I have time and again reiterated that we need to nip the evil in the bud. Let us try to pinpoint the causes of hunger, and impress upon the government to ensure that we do not end up with a food dole programme which becomes unsustainable in the days to come. We cannot and should not keep a nation standing there with a begging bowl. We need to ensure that they become partners in the anti-hunger programme in a manner that they learn how to catch fish rather than being given a fish everyday.
Can we do it? Yes, we can do it. The tragedy is that there is a politcal will to do it but the intellectual support is lacking.
Several years back, I had suggested the concept of Village Republics. To quote from my paper: "Alternative Strategies for India's Development: Agriculture, Food and Hunger" (http://www.mindfully.org/Food/2004/India-Development-Sharma1aug04.htm), I had written:
Village Republics: Focus on tackling the causes of poverty, hunger, the inequitable distribution of income and low human resource base with the objective of providing everyone with the opportunity to earn a sustainable livelihood. The green revolution areas are encountering serious bottlenecks to growth and productivity. Excessive mining of soil nutrients and groundwater have already brought in soil sickness. If the livelihood of the marginalised in the society (and that in the majority world is in agriculture) it must be secured by economic activities that are sustainable, that do not threaten the integrity of the environmental assets on which they depend. Food security and hunger are directly linked to the community’s control over the natural resources, and also on the long-term sustainability of the resource base.
Contrary to commonly made projections and assessments, hundreds of villages in rural India have made their own effort to chart a different but equitable path to growth and human development. Deviating from the mainstream approach, these villages have put up sign board outside the village boundary warning government officials and private company executives from entering their village. The reason: these villages have become self-reliant.
A conservative estimate based on different reports shows that close to 1500 villages have imposed self-rule and have declared themselves village republics. In these villages the residents have taken control over their natural resources – namely forest, land, minerals and water sources – and have formed strong institutions to manage them. They plan, execute and resolve all affairs inside the village and government officials and programmes are accepted only after getting approval of the residents through Gram Sabha (village assembly consisting of all adult members). In many such villages, the forest department, the police and other officials just execute programmes and plans chalked out in village meetings.
Self-reliant villages is the answer to India’s multiple and complex problems of food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition.
I am so gald to read today a similar example in the Sunday Express (July 12, 2009). In his column Thinking Aloud, Sudheendra Kulkarni talks about a village Hivre Bazar in the rural expanse of central Maharashtra. This village, once an epitome of poverty and hunger, now boasts of 50 millionaire families. You can read below how and why it happened. But the central message, as the author brings out clearly, remains in the recognition of the fact that jan, jal, and jungle are the key to making a village self-reliant, prosperous and harmonious.
I want to ask. Isn't this a more sustainable and harmonious way to make hunger history? If this can be achieved in a few hundred villages, why can't it be replicated all over India?
An ideal village, an inspiring leader
By Sudheendra Kulkarni
Sunday Express, July 12, 2009
The road from Parner to Hivre Bazar, in the rural expanse of central Maharashtra, passes through an arid land untouched by prosperity. The hills on the horizon are barren, suggesting that the Sahyadri range of mountains lose both their height and verdure in this rain-shadow region. It is difficult to imagine that located somewhere in this developmental desert is an oasis formed by a celebrated Ideal Village.
I have come to Parner to participate in the Guru Purnima celebrations of a youth organisation inspired by a spiritual guru, the late Ramachandra Maharaj Parnerkar. He propounded Poornavaad, a modernist interpretation of the Vedic philosophy, and I wish to write about him in a future column. But, upon being told that Hivre Bazar is only 30 km away, I cannot resist the temptation of visiting this village, which has won many state and national awards and become almost a place of pilgrimage for those interested in all-round rural development.
Seeing, they say, is believing. But, in this case, what I see exceeds the expectation. Hivre Bazar is a miracle in rural development that would have pleased Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings inspired and guided the villagers in their endeavour. Here is a small village (only 257 families), which, 20 years ago, was perennially drought-prone. Half of its population of around 1,400 used to migrate to Mumbai and Pune in search of work in summer months. Nearly 90 per cent of the families were below poverty line. Alcoholism was rampant, and so were disputes and criminal activities.
Read the full article: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/an-ideal-village-an-inspiring-leader/488234/
There were many in the audience who shared my displeasure. Some of them had stood up and raised their concern. I am glad that at the end (I was later told) the group decided to have a relook and formulated a fresh drafting committee. I only hope the Right to Food campaign, which has done some excellent work in recent past, stands up to the challenge and first widens its approach by including people who have been working on hunger-related issues for long, and secondly brings diverse voices and perspectives that can look at hunger beyond the Public Distribution System.
If you have read my earlier blog entitled Can India make hunger history? (July 10, 2009) I have raised the issues that need to be addressed if we really aim at achieveing Food-for-All. We will need to address the policy initiatives which actually lead to hunger and deprivation. Even if it calls for a paradigm shift in our approach, we must state that explicitly. There is no reason for the civil society to shy away from the onerous task by saying that we have to only take care of entitlements. I mean I can understand the government trying to say so, but that a section of the civil society also trying to behave like the government is something that I am sure we all cannot fathom.
I have time and again reiterated that we need to nip the evil in the bud. Let us try to pinpoint the causes of hunger, and impress upon the government to ensure that we do not end up with a food dole programme which becomes unsustainable in the days to come. We cannot and should not keep a nation standing there with a begging bowl. We need to ensure that they become partners in the anti-hunger programme in a manner that they learn how to catch fish rather than being given a fish everyday.
Can we do it? Yes, we can do it. The tragedy is that there is a politcal will to do it but the intellectual support is lacking.
Several years back, I had suggested the concept of Village Republics. To quote from my paper: "Alternative Strategies for India's Development: Agriculture, Food and Hunger" (http://www.mindfully.org/Food/2004/India-Development-Sharma1aug04.htm), I had written:
Village Republics: Focus on tackling the causes of poverty, hunger, the inequitable distribution of income and low human resource base with the objective of providing everyone with the opportunity to earn a sustainable livelihood. The green revolution areas are encountering serious bottlenecks to growth and productivity. Excessive mining of soil nutrients and groundwater have already brought in soil sickness. If the livelihood of the marginalised in the society (and that in the majority world is in agriculture) it must be secured by economic activities that are sustainable, that do not threaten the integrity of the environmental assets on which they depend. Food security and hunger are directly linked to the community’s control over the natural resources, and also on the long-term sustainability of the resource base.
Contrary to commonly made projections and assessments, hundreds of villages in rural India have made their own effort to chart a different but equitable path to growth and human development. Deviating from the mainstream approach, these villages have put up sign board outside the village boundary warning government officials and private company executives from entering their village. The reason: these villages have become self-reliant.
A conservative estimate based on different reports shows that close to 1500 villages have imposed self-rule and have declared themselves village republics. In these villages the residents have taken control over their natural resources – namely forest, land, minerals and water sources – and have formed strong institutions to manage them. They plan, execute and resolve all affairs inside the village and government officials and programmes are accepted only after getting approval of the residents through Gram Sabha (village assembly consisting of all adult members). In many such villages, the forest department, the police and other officials just execute programmes and plans chalked out in village meetings.
Self-reliant villages is the answer to India’s multiple and complex problems of food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition.
I am so gald to read today a similar example in the Sunday Express (July 12, 2009). In his column Thinking Aloud, Sudheendra Kulkarni talks about a village Hivre Bazar in the rural expanse of central Maharashtra. This village, once an epitome of poverty and hunger, now boasts of 50 millionaire families. You can read below how and why it happened. But the central message, as the author brings out clearly, remains in the recognition of the fact that jan, jal, and jungle are the key to making a village self-reliant, prosperous and harmonious.
I want to ask. Isn't this a more sustainable and harmonious way to make hunger history? If this can be achieved in a few hundred villages, why can't it be replicated all over India?
An ideal village, an inspiring leader
By Sudheendra Kulkarni
Sunday Express, July 12, 2009
The road from Parner to Hivre Bazar, in the rural expanse of central Maharashtra, passes through an arid land untouched by prosperity. The hills on the horizon are barren, suggesting that the Sahyadri range of mountains lose both their height and verdure in this rain-shadow region. It is difficult to imagine that located somewhere in this developmental desert is an oasis formed by a celebrated Ideal Village.
I have come to Parner to participate in the Guru Purnima celebrations of a youth organisation inspired by a spiritual guru, the late Ramachandra Maharaj Parnerkar. He propounded Poornavaad, a modernist interpretation of the Vedic philosophy, and I wish to write about him in a future column. But, upon being told that Hivre Bazar is only 30 km away, I cannot resist the temptation of visiting this village, which has won many state and national awards and become almost a place of pilgrimage for those interested in all-round rural development.
Seeing, they say, is believing. But, in this case, what I see exceeds the expectation. Hivre Bazar is a miracle in rural development that would have pleased Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings inspired and guided the villagers in their endeavour. Here is a small village (only 257 families), which, 20 years ago, was perennially drought-prone. Half of its population of around 1,400 used to migrate to Mumbai and Pune in search of work in summer months. Nearly 90 per cent of the families were below poverty line. Alcoholism was rampant, and so were disputes and criminal activities.
Read the full article: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/an-ideal-village-an-inspiring-leader/488234/
Jul 10, 2009
Can India make hunger history?
Despite its underlying promise of food-for-all, India's proposed National Food Security Act does not address the structural causes of poverty and hunger.
The path to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. The way to feed the hungry and impoverished in India – the world’s largest population of hungry and malnourished – also seems to be driven by good intentions. My only worry is that the proposed National Food Security Act should not push the hungry even more deeply into a virtual hell.
The poor and hungry have lived in a dark abyss for over 60 years now, waiting endlessly for their daily morsel of grain. India’s new draft Food Security Bill, with its underlying promise of food-for-all, surely provides a ray of hope for the hungry millions. It could be a new beginning, if enacted properly, and could turn the appalling hunger in India into history.
From what I read in the newspapers, however, and from what is emerging from the hectic parleys that the Food Ministry as well as the Planning Commission are engaged in, the path being developed is unlikely to deviate from the present direction to hell for the hungry. If the primary objective of the new law is simply to re-classify below-poverty-line (BPL) families by identifying who is entitled to receive 25 kg of grain (wheat and rice) per month at a price of Rs 3/kg (approx. 6 US cents), then I think we have missed the very purpose of bringing in a statutory framework to ensure the right to food.
What makes me more apprehensive is the urgency with which the proposed law is being drafted. Meeting the deadline of putting this law into gear in the first ‘100 days’ of UPA-II (the new cabinet of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) without first adequately debating the finer details and trying to work out a plausible structure for a long-term food security plan, is fraught with dangers. Merely replicating the Public Distribution System (PDS) in a new avatar will not be sufficient to lift people out of hunger.
Towards Zero Hunger
There have been earlier attempts at fighting hunger. Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme launched by President Lula in 2003, for instance, was the result of a year of inputs from various stake-holders, and is still far away from alleviating hunger. It was launched with the objective of providing three square meals a day to an estimated 46 million people living in hunger and extreme poverty.
By 2005, Brazil had invested US $12 billion in the Zero Hunger programme, although President Lula was not satisfied and later criticised the programme for being riddled with mistakes. Drawing inspiration from the Brazilian programme, Egypt also launched a US $2 billion programme for a food insecure population.
There are further lessons to be drawn from Mexico’s Progresa-oportunidades human development programme launched in 1997, which took one year to research and roughly two years to plan. The programme serves 4.2 million households, and costs almost US $1 billion every year.
Even in the United States, which invests heavily in food stamp programmes, hunger is on the rise. More than 31.6 million people, or one in every 10 Americans, are either a beneficiary of the food stamp programme or takes part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance programme.
At present, the government of India provides 35 kg of food grains, including wheat and rice, to 65.2 million families classified as living below the poverty line (BPL). These subsidised rations are made available at a price of Rs 4.15 per kg for wheat, and Rs 5.65 per kg for rice. For the 24.3 million families classified under the Antyodya scheme (also part of the BPL category), the price of grains is reduced to Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 3 for rice.
In other words, India’s Public Distribution Scheme technically caters to 316 million people (under BPL). These are the poorest of the poor, and the way the BPL line has been drawn (which in my opinion should be dubbed the ‘starvation line’) the PDS should provide them with their minimal daily food intake. If the PDS had been even partially effective, I see no reason why India should be saddled with the largest population of hungry in the world. There is no reason why the Punjab, for example, the best performing state in terms of hunger, should be ranked below Gabon, Honduras and Vietnam in the Global Hunger Index.
Any programme aimed at providing food-for-all on a long-term basis has to look beyond food stamps and public distribution schemes. India must move to a Zero Hunger programme by attacking the structural causes of poverty and hunger. Creating adequate employment opportunities and promoting sustainable livelihoods by involving the village communities has to be woven into any long-term food security plan. Better health care facilities, access to safe drinking water and sufficient micro-nutrient intake will ensure that food is properly absorbed.
An empty stomach cannot wait. With the passage of time it will inevitably lead to social upheavals, and the repercussions could be still more damaging to society at large. It is so painful to see that while the government is trying to fight the growing menace of naxalism on the one hand, on the other it is actually perpetuating the conditions that help promote extremism. Agriculture is being sacrificed for the sake of industry, mining and exports, and land acquisitions are divesting Indian farmers of their only form of economic security by forcing them to quit agriculture.
The proposed National Food Security Act cannot be a stand-alone activity. It has to be integrated with various other programmes and policy initiatives to ensure that hunger becomes history. To achieve this objective, the food security plan should essentially aim at adopting a five-point approach:
Public Policies for Zero Hunger: A combination of structural policies aimed at the real causes of hunger and poverty, specific policies to meet the household needs for long-term access to food and nutrition, and local policies based on local needs that keep the concept of sustainable livelihoods in focus. For instance, all policies should be aimed at reversing the rural-urban migration. The more migration escalates, the more urban centres will be chocked, and the greater the burden on government support for fighting hunger. Agriculture and rural development remains the best defence against the growing threat of naxalism.
Sustainable livelihoods: In a country where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, all efforts must be directed towards strengthening low external input sustainable agricultural practices. There is an urgent need to revitalise the natural resource base, restore groundwater levels, and provide higher incomes to farmers. A monthly take-home income package based on land holdings has to be worked out for farmers. The NREGA has to be integrated with agriculture, and the interest on micro-credit for the poorest of the poor has to be brought down to 4 per cent from the existing 20-48 per cent.
Public Distribution System: There is an urgent need to dismantle the PDS except for the Antyodya families (those identified by the Indian government as the poorest of the poor who should receive state-provided wheat and rice). The present classification of BPL and APL (‘below poverty levels’ and ‘above poverty levels’) needs to be done away with. The recommendation of the National Commission on Enterprise in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), which states that 836 million people in India spend less than Rs 20 (40 US cents) a day, should be the criteria for a meaningful food-for-all programme. The average ration per family at 25 kg also needs to be revised upwards, and there is a need to expand the food basket by including coarse cereals and pulses.
Foodgrain Banks: The dismantling of the Public Distribution System has to be followed by the setting up of foodgrain banks at the village and taluka level. Any long-term food security plan cannot remain sustainable unless the poor and hungry become partners in the fight against hunger. There are ample examples of successful models of traditional grain banks (for instance, the famed gola system in Bihar), which need to be replicated through a nationwide programme involving self-help groups and NGOs. Programmes and projects must be drawn up to make foodgrain banks sustainable over the long-term and viable without government support in a couple of years, involving charitable institutions, religious bodies, self-help groups (SHGs) and the non-profit organizations to ensure speedy implementation. system in
International commitments: Global commitments and neoliberal economic policies should not be allowed to interfere with the food security plan. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and various bilateral trade deals should not be allowed to displace farming communities and play havoc with national food security. For instance, India cannot compromise agriculture in the ongoing Doha Round of negotiations in the WTO which will allow cheaper and subsidised imports. Importing food for a country like India is like importing unemployment, thereby increasing the number of hungry.
The path to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. The way to feed the hungry and impoverished in India – the world’s largest population of hungry and malnourished – also seems to be driven by good intentions. My only worry is that the proposed National Food Security Act should not push the hungry even more deeply into a virtual hell.
The poor and hungry have lived in a dark abyss for over 60 years now, waiting endlessly for their daily morsel of grain. India’s new draft Food Security Bill, with its underlying promise of food-for-all, surely provides a ray of hope for the hungry millions. It could be a new beginning, if enacted properly, and could turn the appalling hunger in India into history.
From what I read in the newspapers, however, and from what is emerging from the hectic parleys that the Food Ministry as well as the Planning Commission are engaged in, the path being developed is unlikely to deviate from the present direction to hell for the hungry. If the primary objective of the new law is simply to re-classify below-poverty-line (BPL) families by identifying who is entitled to receive 25 kg of grain (wheat and rice) per month at a price of Rs 3/kg (approx. 6 US cents), then I think we have missed the very purpose of bringing in a statutory framework to ensure the right to food.
What makes me more apprehensive is the urgency with which the proposed law is being drafted. Meeting the deadline of putting this law into gear in the first ‘100 days’ of UPA-II (the new cabinet of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) without first adequately debating the finer details and trying to work out a plausible structure for a long-term food security plan, is fraught with dangers. Merely replicating the Public Distribution System (PDS) in a new avatar will not be sufficient to lift people out of hunger.
Towards Zero Hunger
There have been earlier attempts at fighting hunger. Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme launched by President Lula in 2003, for instance, was the result of a year of inputs from various stake-holders, and is still far away from alleviating hunger. It was launched with the objective of providing three square meals a day to an estimated 46 million people living in hunger and extreme poverty.
By 2005, Brazil had invested US $12 billion in the Zero Hunger programme, although President Lula was not satisfied and later criticised the programme for being riddled with mistakes. Drawing inspiration from the Brazilian programme, Egypt also launched a US $2 billion programme for a food insecure population.
There are further lessons to be drawn from Mexico’s Progresa-oportunidades human development programme launched in 1997, which took one year to research and roughly two years to plan. The programme serves 4.2 million households, and costs almost US $1 billion every year.
Even in the United States, which invests heavily in food stamp programmes, hunger is on the rise. More than 31.6 million people, or one in every 10 Americans, are either a beneficiary of the food stamp programme or takes part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance programme.
At present, the government of India provides 35 kg of food grains, including wheat and rice, to 65.2 million families classified as living below the poverty line (BPL). These subsidised rations are made available at a price of Rs 4.15 per kg for wheat, and Rs 5.65 per kg for rice. For the 24.3 million families classified under the Antyodya scheme (also part of the BPL category), the price of grains is reduced to Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 3 for rice.
In other words, India’s Public Distribution Scheme technically caters to 316 million people (under BPL). These are the poorest of the poor, and the way the BPL line has been drawn (which in my opinion should be dubbed the ‘starvation line’) the PDS should provide them with their minimal daily food intake. If the PDS had been even partially effective, I see no reason why India should be saddled with the largest population of hungry in the world. There is no reason why the Punjab, for example, the best performing state in terms of hunger, should be ranked below Gabon, Honduras and Vietnam in the Global Hunger Index.
Any programme aimed at providing food-for-all on a long-term basis has to look beyond food stamps and public distribution schemes. India must move to a Zero Hunger programme by attacking the structural causes of poverty and hunger. Creating adequate employment opportunities and promoting sustainable livelihoods by involving the village communities has to be woven into any long-term food security plan. Better health care facilities, access to safe drinking water and sufficient micro-nutrient intake will ensure that food is properly absorbed.
An empty stomach cannot wait. With the passage of time it will inevitably lead to social upheavals, and the repercussions could be still more damaging to society at large. It is so painful to see that while the government is trying to fight the growing menace of naxalism on the one hand, on the other it is actually perpetuating the conditions that help promote extremism. Agriculture is being sacrificed for the sake of industry, mining and exports, and land acquisitions are divesting Indian farmers of their only form of economic security by forcing them to quit agriculture.
The proposed National Food Security Act cannot be a stand-alone activity. It has to be integrated with various other programmes and policy initiatives to ensure that hunger becomes history. To achieve this objective, the food security plan should essentially aim at adopting a five-point approach:
Public Policies for Zero Hunger: A combination of structural policies aimed at the real causes of hunger and poverty, specific policies to meet the household needs for long-term access to food and nutrition, and local policies based on local needs that keep the concept of sustainable livelihoods in focus. For instance, all policies should be aimed at reversing the rural-urban migration. The more migration escalates, the more urban centres will be chocked, and the greater the burden on government support for fighting hunger. Agriculture and rural development remains the best defence against the growing threat of naxalism.
Sustainable livelihoods: In a country where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, all efforts must be directed towards strengthening low external input sustainable agricultural practices. There is an urgent need to revitalise the natural resource base, restore groundwater levels, and provide higher incomes to farmers. A monthly take-home income package based on land holdings has to be worked out for farmers. The NREGA has to be integrated with agriculture, and the interest on micro-credit for the poorest of the poor has to be brought down to 4 per cent from the existing 20-48 per cent.
Public Distribution System: There is an urgent need to dismantle the PDS except for the Antyodya families (those identified by the Indian government as the poorest of the poor who should receive state-provided wheat and rice). The present classification of BPL and APL (‘below poverty levels’ and ‘above poverty levels’) needs to be done away with. The recommendation of the National Commission on Enterprise in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), which states that 836 million people in India spend less than Rs 20 (40 US cents) a day, should be the criteria for a meaningful food-for-all programme. The average ration per family at 25 kg also needs to be revised upwards, and there is a need to expand the food basket by including coarse cereals and pulses.
Foodgrain Banks: The dismantling of the Public Distribution System has to be followed by the setting up of foodgrain banks at the village and taluka level. Any long-term food security plan cannot remain sustainable unless the poor and hungry become partners in the fight against hunger. There are ample examples of successful models of traditional grain banks (for instance, the famed gola system in Bihar), which need to be replicated through a nationwide programme involving self-help groups and NGOs. Programmes and projects must be drawn up to make foodgrain banks sustainable over the long-term and viable without government support in a couple of years, involving charitable institutions, religious bodies, self-help groups (SHGs) and the non-profit organizations to ensure speedy implementation. system in
International commitments: Global commitments and neoliberal economic policies should not be allowed to interfere with the food security plan. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and various bilateral trade deals should not be allowed to displace farming communities and play havoc with national food security. For instance, India cannot compromise agriculture in the ongoing Doha Round of negotiations in the WTO which will allow cheaper and subsidised imports. Importing food for a country like India is like importing unemployment, thereby increasing the number of hungry.
Jul 8, 2009
Politics, Economics and the Budget
A few days before Pranab Mukherjee read his budget speech, I was on some TV panels discussing the Economic Survey 2008-09. The exuberance that business magnates and economists working for private consultancy firms and ratings agencies exhibited at the sweeping pro-reforms wish list that the survey report carried made me realise how disconnected corporate India was from the real India.
I wasn’t therefore surprised when the stock market continued the downslide as Pranab Mukherjee turned the pages of his budget speech two days later. In fact, I now realise that the fall of the stock markets after every budget is so well manoeuvred that we now know how the investors and the TV channels exert public pressure. It is merely a lobbying tool for the investors to extract as much as possible from the government treasury. It doesn’t mean anything else. The nation knows that. Only the electronic media and a section of the print media thinks otherwise, and we know why.
The day the Budget 2009 was delivered, the media was naturally upset. So were the corporate leaders whose pulled down faces told you how frustrated they were at being ignored by the Finance Minister. On the UTVi channel the same evening, Hindol Sengupta said that nearly 44 per cent people who particpated in a poll conducted by the TV channel have expressed satisfaction with what the Finance Minister had presented. I wasn't surprised because I knew how disconnected the media is from the ground realities.
The same evening I heard several talking heads bemoan the neglect of industry and business in the budget proposals. They seemed to be more depressed than the business leaders themselves. Time and again it was said that the hike in social spending that Pranab Mukherjee had focused on was not going to 'deliver' and the failure to further reform (read provide more sops) business and industry would negatively affect country's growth. No wonder the credibility of the media has taken a nosedive.
Economic Times the mouthpiece of business and industry too has acknowledged (ET, July 8) in its report India greets FM's Bharat efforts with hail-storm that even while economists, the stock markets, ratings agencies, and talking heads in the media were rubbishing his first budget for UPA-2 as long on fiscal profligacy and short on deliverables, its focus on Bharat's 'aam aadmi' found favour with the man on the street in urban India. Does it not mean that the man on the street in urban areas is much more in touch with the ground realities and if one may say much more intelligent than these brokers -- economists, ratings agencies, stock markets and the talking heads?
Accordingly, the FM seems to have sold to them his logic that inclusion of the underprivileged and have-nots is enlightened self-interest and could be the panacea for sustained prosperity. As per the results from the ET-Hansa Research Post Budget Mood of the Nation Poll, half of those surveyed across four metros plus Bangalore and Ahmedabad were happy, with the count of sulkers under a fourth.
Compare this with Budget 2008 when P Chidambaram presented the last budget of the previous UPA-1. Remember he provided for a Rs 65,000-crore farm loan waiver which too had not found favour with the economists and the talking heads. That budget was liked by 63 per cent of those surveyed, with another 25 per cent remaining neutral.
Often I hear economists say that providing succour to farmers and the social sector is not economics but politics. I am shocked to hear this. I wonder what kind of economics are we talking about if it does not benefit the masses. Does economics only come into play when business and industry are provided subsidies and tax concessions? Is it not economics when outlays directly reach the poor and marginalised? Probably I am saying this because I am not an economist. If that be so, I am happy that I am not an economist. I have my feet perfectly grounded.
I wasn’t therefore surprised when the stock market continued the downslide as Pranab Mukherjee turned the pages of his budget speech two days later. In fact, I now realise that the fall of the stock markets after every budget is so well manoeuvred that we now know how the investors and the TV channels exert public pressure. It is merely a lobbying tool for the investors to extract as much as possible from the government treasury. It doesn’t mean anything else. The nation knows that. Only the electronic media and a section of the print media thinks otherwise, and we know why.
The day the Budget 2009 was delivered, the media was naturally upset. So were the corporate leaders whose pulled down faces told you how frustrated they were at being ignored by the Finance Minister. On the UTVi channel the same evening, Hindol Sengupta said that nearly 44 per cent people who particpated in a poll conducted by the TV channel have expressed satisfaction with what the Finance Minister had presented. I wasn't surprised because I knew how disconnected the media is from the ground realities.
The same evening I heard several talking heads bemoan the neglect of industry and business in the budget proposals. They seemed to be more depressed than the business leaders themselves. Time and again it was said that the hike in social spending that Pranab Mukherjee had focused on was not going to 'deliver' and the failure to further reform (read provide more sops) business and industry would negatively affect country's growth. No wonder the credibility of the media has taken a nosedive.
Economic Times the mouthpiece of business and industry too has acknowledged (ET, July 8) in its report India greets FM's Bharat efforts with hail-storm that even while economists, the stock markets, ratings agencies, and talking heads in the media were rubbishing his first budget for UPA-2 as long on fiscal profligacy and short on deliverables, its focus on Bharat's 'aam aadmi' found favour with the man on the street in urban India. Does it not mean that the man on the street in urban areas is much more in touch with the ground realities and if one may say much more intelligent than these brokers -- economists, ratings agencies, stock markets and the talking heads?
Accordingly, the FM seems to have sold to them his logic that inclusion of the underprivileged and have-nots is enlightened self-interest and could be the panacea for sustained prosperity. As per the results from the ET-Hansa Research Post Budget Mood of the Nation Poll, half of those surveyed across four metros plus Bangalore and Ahmedabad were happy, with the count of sulkers under a fourth.
Compare this with Budget 2008 when P Chidambaram presented the last budget of the previous UPA-1. Remember he provided for a Rs 65,000-crore farm loan waiver which too had not found favour with the economists and the talking heads. That budget was liked by 63 per cent of those surveyed, with another 25 per cent remaining neutral.
Often I hear economists say that providing succour to farmers and the social sector is not economics but politics. I am shocked to hear this. I wonder what kind of economics are we talking about if it does not benefit the masses. Does economics only come into play when business and industry are provided subsidies and tax concessions? Is it not economics when outlays directly reach the poor and marginalised? Probably I am saying this because I am not an economist. If that be so, I am happy that I am not an economist. I have my feet perfectly grounded.
Jul 7, 2009
Budget 2009: Cultivating Agriculture
Guest Column - Devinder Sharma
The Telegraph, Kolkata, July 7 2009
Call it a Thanksgiving budget or a much-needed push to social spending; Pranab Mukherjee has provided a neat blend of economic stimulus that targets the rural and agriculture sector comprising nearly 70 per cent of the population.
For a crisis-ridden agriculture sector, suffering more from an acute paucity of farm labour, Pranab Mukherjee has tried to apply the balm by integrating the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) with agriculture, forests and water conservation. By doing so, the finance minister has shifted the focus of the flagship programme from digging roads and ponds and turned it into a more meaningful and productive investment.
This in reality is an economic stimulus that the agriculture sector was eagerly waiting for. To be launched in 115 pilot districts and, with an enhanced budgetary allocation of Rs 39,100-crore, the NREGS (for agriculture) will now be able to rescue an ailing farm sector. In my opinion, the integration of NREGS with agriculture and forestry should provide the right impetus. Instead of launching new schemes, it is much more useful to ensure how the existing programme be made more effective.
Increasing the credit flow to the farm sector from the existing Rs 2,87,000-crore to Rs 3,25,000-crore, providing relief to farmers by extending the loan recovery period to the end of the year, and setting up a task force specially for the Vidharba farmers are surely steps in the right direction. Add to it the correction promised in fertiliser usage by shifting the subsidy from product base to a balanced application of nutrients base will help in removing the imbalance in fertiliser application that has led to the destruction of soil health.
After the farm loan waiver in 2008, I wasn’t expecting any sensational announcements in agriculture, but surely Pranab Mukherjee has tried to make an effort in bridging the urban-rural divide by pushing social welfare spending. Besides the promised National Food Security Act and the enhanced outlay in NREGS, the UPA government has made budgetary allocations for the unorganised workers including weavers, fishermen, toddy tappers, leather and handicraft workers, plantation workers, bidi workers and rickshaw pullers.
Health insurance for the BPL families, under which 46 lakh families have been covered in 2008-09, an additional Rs 2,057-crore allocation over the interim budget provisions of Rs 12,070-crore under the National Rural Health Mission, providing interest subsidy for the self-help groups, housing for urban poor, the Adarsh gram yojna for the dalit villages are surely welfare schemes that need to be appreciated. The plan to bring every child under the age of 6 years under the Intensive Child Development Scheme (ICDS) comes at a time when it has been estimated that 47 per cent of Indian children below the age of 3 are malnourished.
At a time when climate change is emerging as a major global issue, the finance minister has promised to make allocations for the eight missions under the national action plan on climate change. More than treating climate change as a separate subject, I suggest the government takes appropriate corrective steps in its economic policies and programmes. In fact, much of the global crisis arising from climate change is the result of faulty economic policies, and it is here that I don’t see any realisation on the part of the government to nip the evil in the bud.
THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN A MEMBER OF SEVERAL PANELS ON AGRICULTURE
The Telegraph, Kolkata, July 7 2009
Call it a Thanksgiving budget or a much-needed push to social spending; Pranab Mukherjee has provided a neat blend of economic stimulus that targets the rural and agriculture sector comprising nearly 70 per cent of the population.
For a crisis-ridden agriculture sector, suffering more from an acute paucity of farm labour, Pranab Mukherjee has tried to apply the balm by integrating the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) with agriculture, forests and water conservation. By doing so, the finance minister has shifted the focus of the flagship programme from digging roads and ponds and turned it into a more meaningful and productive investment.
This in reality is an economic stimulus that the agriculture sector was eagerly waiting for. To be launched in 115 pilot districts and, with an enhanced budgetary allocation of Rs 39,100-crore, the NREGS (for agriculture) will now be able to rescue an ailing farm sector. In my opinion, the integration of NREGS with agriculture and forestry should provide the right impetus. Instead of launching new schemes, it is much more useful to ensure how the existing programme be made more effective.
Increasing the credit flow to the farm sector from the existing Rs 2,87,000-crore to Rs 3,25,000-crore, providing relief to farmers by extending the loan recovery period to the end of the year, and setting up a task force specially for the Vidharba farmers are surely steps in the right direction. Add to it the correction promised in fertiliser usage by shifting the subsidy from product base to a balanced application of nutrients base will help in removing the imbalance in fertiliser application that has led to the destruction of soil health.
After the farm loan waiver in 2008, I wasn’t expecting any sensational announcements in agriculture, but surely Pranab Mukherjee has tried to make an effort in bridging the urban-rural divide by pushing social welfare spending. Besides the promised National Food Security Act and the enhanced outlay in NREGS, the UPA government has made budgetary allocations for the unorganised workers including weavers, fishermen, toddy tappers, leather and handicraft workers, plantation workers, bidi workers and rickshaw pullers.
Health insurance for the BPL families, under which 46 lakh families have been covered in 2008-09, an additional Rs 2,057-crore allocation over the interim budget provisions of Rs 12,070-crore under the National Rural Health Mission, providing interest subsidy for the self-help groups, housing for urban poor, the Adarsh gram yojna for the dalit villages are surely welfare schemes that need to be appreciated. The plan to bring every child under the age of 6 years under the Intensive Child Development Scheme (ICDS) comes at a time when it has been estimated that 47 per cent of Indian children below the age of 3 are malnourished.
At a time when climate change is emerging as a major global issue, the finance minister has promised to make allocations for the eight missions under the national action plan on climate change. More than treating climate change as a separate subject, I suggest the government takes appropriate corrective steps in its economic policies and programmes. In fact, much of the global crisis arising from climate change is the result of faulty economic policies, and it is here that I don’t see any realisation on the part of the government to nip the evil in the bud.
THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN A MEMBER OF SEVERAL PANELS ON AGRICULTURE
Jul 2, 2009
Bt cotton game in Pakistan
A few days ago we had discussed how Bt cotton was being illegally pushed in Pakistan (The illegal way to promote Bt cotton in Pakistan: http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/06/bt-cotton-seeds-smuggled-from-india.html). It was interesting to observe a number of similarities between the way Bt cotton was pushed in India, and almost the same strategy being now followed in Pakistan. In India, it was allowed to be illegally cultivated in Gujarat, and once the issue flared up the GEAC directed the State government to destroy the standing crop. The State government of course expressed its inability to do so.
In Pakistan, smuggling of seed from India is rampant, and the government looks the other side.
Meanwhile, Monsanto has been given a free hand in importing, testing and pricing its Bt cotton seeds. Shoaib Aziz has in response to my querry (through Najma Sadeque) sent me the following dispatch. One thing that emerges out clearly, and which many of you who have been following the way public sector institutes behave in India, is the way Monsanto lords over research institutes in Pakistan. In India too, Monsanto has taken a complete control over agricultural infrastructure -- and Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) is the second biggest public research infrastructure in the world -- and I find Indian agricultural scientists being dictated and bossed over by Monsanto/Mahyco officials.
In US/EU we are talking of the revolving door. In India and Pakistan, all doors have been opened for Monsanto/Mahyco/Syngenta/Du Pont and ISAAA officials. You can't imagine the level to which the ICAR system has degenerated. A large number of young scientists have been telling me how suffocating it is to work for ICAR now. The senior lot, and that includes the top administration of ICAR, Vice-Chancellors and Deans of the Agricultural Universities and the Directors of national institutes are merely pawns in the hands of the multinationals. There may be a few exceptions here and there but by and large the system rots.
I wonder when will the UPA-2 begin to disinvest the ICAR institutes. After all, if these institutes have to do exactly what the MNCs are doing, why should the tax-payers money go in supporting these research centres. I know there would a hue and cry if the government gives a thought on disinvestment, but let me assure you the country's food security is more under threat from a 'colonised' ICAR than without it.
Here is Shoaib Aziz's update from Pakistan:
Government has allowed Monsanto to begin its trials on Bt Cotton in Pakistan. Although companies are not allowed to bring foreign seed in Pakistan but Monsanto has been given special permission and exempted from these rules. They have brought 29 hybrid and Bt cotton varieties in Pakistan and have started trials.
Despite our hectic efforts we could not obtain the information of their trial fields. We have been told by officials of Ministry of Environment that Monsanto is conducting trials in four places. We do not know who is monitoring these trials and what mechanism has been adopted to protect neighbouring fields.
In 2010 Monsanto will start marketing their seed in Pakistan. No body knows including officials from Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) about the price of Bt cotton seeds that Monsanto will bring in the market. It is being said that Monsanto has been given free hand to arbitrarily set prices of its seed.
We are astonished to see the role the government officials play, who are behaving and giving gestures as if they are not employees of government but rather employees of Monsanto. MINFAL has set up Bt cotton promotion body in their department and including two hand-picked farmers from Punjab and Sind. Let me remind you both farmers are close associate of MINFAL and it is alleged that both farmers play role of brokers between MINFAL and agriculture companies to benefits both actors.
Last November, during ActionAid consultation forum on Bt, both government officials Dr. Tasawar from MINFAL and Dr. Yousaf from NARC over-vehemently supported Bt cotton for Pakistan. Civil Society and farmers present in the forum were shocked to hear their point of view.
I have been told that Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) has imported two ton Bt seed from China and distributing among farmers freely in Punjab and Monsanto is perturbed over import of Bt cotton seed. We are trying to acquire more information in this regard and as soon as we get the information, I will let you know. Moreover, we have put this issue on SAAG agenda and we will further discuss it on SAAG retreat.
Best regards
Shoaib Aziz
In Pakistan, smuggling of seed from India is rampant, and the government looks the other side.
Meanwhile, Monsanto has been given a free hand in importing, testing and pricing its Bt cotton seeds. Shoaib Aziz has in response to my querry (through Najma Sadeque) sent me the following dispatch. One thing that emerges out clearly, and which many of you who have been following the way public sector institutes behave in India, is the way Monsanto lords over research institutes in Pakistan. In India too, Monsanto has taken a complete control over agricultural infrastructure -- and Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) is the second biggest public research infrastructure in the world -- and I find Indian agricultural scientists being dictated and bossed over by Monsanto/Mahyco officials.
In US/EU we are talking of the revolving door. In India and Pakistan, all doors have been opened for Monsanto/Mahyco/Syngenta/Du Pont and ISAAA officials. You can't imagine the level to which the ICAR system has degenerated. A large number of young scientists have been telling me how suffocating it is to work for ICAR now. The senior lot, and that includes the top administration of ICAR, Vice-Chancellors and Deans of the Agricultural Universities and the Directors of national institutes are merely pawns in the hands of the multinationals. There may be a few exceptions here and there but by and large the system rots.
I wonder when will the UPA-2 begin to disinvest the ICAR institutes. After all, if these institutes have to do exactly what the MNCs are doing, why should the tax-payers money go in supporting these research centres. I know there would a hue and cry if the government gives a thought on disinvestment, but let me assure you the country's food security is more under threat from a 'colonised' ICAR than without it.
Here is Shoaib Aziz's update from Pakistan:
Government has allowed Monsanto to begin its trials on Bt Cotton in Pakistan. Although companies are not allowed to bring foreign seed in Pakistan but Monsanto has been given special permission and exempted from these rules. They have brought 29 hybrid and Bt cotton varieties in Pakistan and have started trials.
Despite our hectic efforts we could not obtain the information of their trial fields. We have been told by officials of Ministry of Environment that Monsanto is conducting trials in four places. We do not know who is monitoring these trials and what mechanism has been adopted to protect neighbouring fields.
In 2010 Monsanto will start marketing their seed in Pakistan. No body knows including officials from Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) about the price of Bt cotton seeds that Monsanto will bring in the market. It is being said that Monsanto has been given free hand to arbitrarily set prices of its seed.
We are astonished to see the role the government officials play, who are behaving and giving gestures as if they are not employees of government but rather employees of Monsanto. MINFAL has set up Bt cotton promotion body in their department and including two hand-picked farmers from Punjab and Sind. Let me remind you both farmers are close associate of MINFAL and it is alleged that both farmers play role of brokers between MINFAL and agriculture companies to benefits both actors.
Last November, during ActionAid consultation forum on Bt, both government officials Dr. Tasawar from MINFAL and Dr. Yousaf from NARC over-vehemently supported Bt cotton for Pakistan. Civil Society and farmers present in the forum were shocked to hear their point of view.
I have been told that Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) has imported two ton Bt seed from China and distributing among farmers freely in Punjab and Monsanto is perturbed over import of Bt cotton seed. We are trying to acquire more information in this regard and as soon as we get the information, I will let you know. Moreover, we have put this issue on SAAG agenda and we will further discuss it on SAAG retreat.
Best regards
Shoaib Aziz
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