Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote [at 10:11 AM 8/20/2007] : You can't blindly deploy them though - ICRISAT (www.icrisat.org) - a UN agency that deals with agriculture in semi arid tropics, and HQ'd Hyderabad, plus based in several countries, has an excellent paper that I googled up on what needs to be done: http://www.icrisat.org/ESA/Can_Drip_Irrigation.pdf Here's another very interesting essay, from Karl Schroeder, better known for post-Singularity SF: http://www.worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/006936.html Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
On Mon, Aug 20, 2007 at 10:11:11AM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Agreed - that and chains like whole foods. But how much does this gel with the other fact, about a hundred or so small american farmers going bankrupt every other month (or year)? small american farmers (and european ones) are going bankrupt despite enormous subsidies partly because the subsidies are tailored towards large industrial farmers. e.g. they favour grain products rather than, say, organic blueberries (which the US doesn't subsidise at all). while the growth of organic food products and farmers' markets and the usually higher prices (some) people are willing to pay for them is interesting, the farmers who can / do take advantage of this are not necessarily the same as those going out of business farming something else. one of the slightly more intelligent voices in the farming debate in europe (where each cow gets a subsidy of 2 euro a day, more than most people in the world live on) is the austrians, who have been trying without much success to move subsidies from things that are industrialised and already cheap (and when made cheaper ruin the livelihoods of farmers in poor countries who don't have subsidies) to expensive, small-scale, local organic produce. All due respect to sainath, but the israeli kits are actually very good.. and if people are able to grow crops in a wasteland like the negev, they are clearly effective. at what? his point was that they are very expensive, and israeli agriculture based on them wouldn't survive without massive US aid. it's hard to argue with that partly because the size of US aid is so huge that its effects are pervasive. miraculous farming often takes place in the presence of enormous (sometimes hidden) subsidies - californian oranges come to mind, grown as they are in a desert with fertile soil and water diverted from other states at enormous subsidised cost. -rishab
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh [20/08/07 08:48 +]: at what? his point was that they are very expensive, and israeli agriculture based on them wouldn't survive without massive US aid. it's drip irrigation kits arent exactly expensive.. and comparatively simple tech, easy to fabricate locally at a fraction of the cost.
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
On 8/20/07, ashok _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One aspect, that I am surprised he didnt cover is the issue of smaller and smaller land-holdings because of inheritance. You have a farmer who started with 20 acres, had five sons, each was left with a less viable 4 acres... and so on and they all end up working in a back alley in a city... This is probably an issue related to land reforms, making farming land more easily available I think that's been a fairly well trodden path since the days of co-operative farming in communist states. I don't claim it's a non-issue, but merely a well understood one. That state policies still allow this to happen is a statement on how ineffective the general level of governance is in India. My favorite data point here is the benefits transfer statistic of the public distribution system as documented by innumerable sources - it is less than 1/4th of the budget allocation. One of the points that really needs more publicizing in the post liberalization India is the current state of information disparity - the case in point being his example of two neighboring pieces of land being sold for vastly different sums. Cheeni Cheeni
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
On 8/20/07, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh [20/08/07 08:48 +]: at what? his point was that they are very expensive, and israeli agriculture based on them wouldn't survive without massive US aid. it's drip irrigation kits arent exactly expensive.. and comparatively simple tech, easy to fabricate locally at a fraction of the cost. You've of course heard of toilet seats that cost a fortune in a government budget. When you are importing something that can be manufactured locally for a fraction of the cost, that is the inefficiency that I believe is being pointed out. Cheeni
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
Udhay. please unsuybscribe me from Silk.Thanks. M. Ramesh _ Recharge--play some free games. Win cool prizes too! http://club.live.com/home.aspx?icid=CLUB_wlmailtextlink
[silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
a great interview [1] on india together with p sainath, who won the latest magsaysay award for persistently covering the rural india that everyone else ignores. a nice quote is: You know how people in the middle classes talk and read about the 'Invisible India'? That's such a lot of rubbish. Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom, what we should be talking about is the Blind India that can't see this elephant. And that means talking to the middle and upper classes, speaking plainly about biases, privileges, etc. I want to do that. 1. http://indiatogether.org/2007/aug/ivw-sainath.htm Ashwin Mahesh talks with 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award winner P. Sainath. P. Sainath, whose intelligent and insightful views on agriculture, caste, media and other matters have been greatly appreciated by countless readers, has been awarded the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. In selecting him this year's winner, the board of trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation awards committee recognizes his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India's consciousness, moving the nation to action. Picture: P. Sainath credit: Sadanand Menon In an exclusive interview to India Together, P. Sainath talks to Ashwin Mahesh about his work and his views on trade, politics, society, and the media. Ashwin Mahesh: This is a serious award for serious work, so let's get straight to it. Does this recognition change anything? Does it improve the chances of the agricultural crisis or caste deprivation or the other things you've been writing about being tackled more purposefully? P. Sainath: Yes. Recognition of this sort, or by any award, changes a few things. One, it increases the space for such issues. A lot of editors might stop and ask if they too should be giving these topics more attention. Second, it encourages a lot of others who are interested in writing about these things, but are now hesitant for one reason or another, to give it a try. I came from Blitz, as you know. But after I won the Times fellowship, a lot of other people decided to apply for it the following year, thinking that if someone not normally 'in the race' for such recognition is being noticed, they too might have a chance. If you publish 84 articles on poverty, pretty soon everyone else will do some of it too. You've seen how The Hindu's coverage has led to some mimickry of reporting in other papers, even with the Vidarbha series, the Wayanad series, and so on. • Write the author • P. Sainath - homepage • Interviews • Send to a friend • Printer friendly version And all this is a good thing. People like me don't have the 'scoop' problem. We don't mind if the things we are writing about are picked up by others, repeated in other publications, and so on. It's in the nature of the things we write, that we want them to be more written about. And an award always gives that possibility a boost. That's espeacially good if you're a freelancer, like I've been for such a long time - the scope for getting published jumps when a new space becomes more inviting to a lot of publishers. One shouldn't discount the personal satisfaction, either. Obviously, that's a big plus. AM: Let's move to the issues themselves, and start with agriculture. One hears a lot of people arguing that small and medium farms are simply unviable in the global agricultural scenario. Do you agree? Is there really a model that can work for the small farmer in India, or are we going to see family farms go the way they did in the US? PS: First off, I think they're wrong to question viability in such simplistic terms. If you consciously develop something, and nurture it, then it becomes viable. What we have is a situation where agriculture in India is being made unviable by imposition. Is American agriculture really viable? You have a situation where cotton crop worth 3.9 billion dollars receives 4.7 billion in subsidies. The Europeans are throwing billions of euros worth of crops into the sea. Whose farming is really unviable? In reality, developed world farming is hugely wasteful, not to forget destructive of soils. And yet, the question is asked if Third World farming, especially small and medium farms, can last in the long run. No one is interested in giving the farmers any choice. In Wardha, in Akola, input dealers are saying that unless farmers buy Hi-Feed (a new chemical) they will not supply them urea this year. • Ideology of the cancer cell • What the heart does not feel • India shining, Great depression • Growing inequalities But let's address the questions anyway. There are essentially two kinds of people who question the viability of small farms. The first are those who favour corporate farming, and argue in favour of scale, productivity, and so on. They look at agriculture from a 'production' or 'output' lens. The second group looks at livelihood issues, and asks whether
Re: [silk] Invisible India is the elephant in your bedroom
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: a great interview [1] on india together with p sainath, who won the Excellent, though there's something that wikipedia would call POV in there.. he does have strong opinions on a few things that I would disagree with. summarised in four words - more of the same. And the babalog who've learned their economics from Tom Friedman - not Milton Friedman, but Tom! - are telling us about free markets, and how subsidies like support WONDERFUL quote, this. chemical-contaminated, corporate-produced stuff. In 1984, when I first visited the US, there were only a few small farmers' markets here and there. This year, there were markets that I found hard to enter, because they're so crowded. Agreed - that and chains like whole foods. But how much does this gel with the other fact, about a hundred or so small american farmers going bankrupt every other month (or year)? Because ministers in the government are close to sprinkler makers in Jalgaon. Or they want to push drip irrigation kits they have imported from Israel and want to dump on farmers here. Israeli agriculture is total bogus, it won't last three weeks without American aid. And in any case, drip and sprinklers that work in the Negev desert are not exactly built for Lonavala, with 2400 mm of rain! All due respect to sainath, but the israeli kits are actually very good.. and if people are able to grow crops in a wasteland like the negev, they are clearly effective. Only, as he says, lonavla is not exactly the right place to deploy them. Marathwada and North Karnataka for example, definitely are - dry, arid places with a thin layer of laterite soil (volcanic rock, basically), where most of the crops there are millet (jowar) and such. You can't blindly deploy them though - ICRISAT (www.icrisat.org) - a UN agency that deals with agriculture in semi arid tropics, and HQ'd Hyderabad, plus based in several countries, has an excellent paper that I googled up on what needs to be done: http://www.icrisat.org/ESA/Can_Drip_Irrigation.pdf caste, and start screaming I've never discriminated against anyone. Or we have rubbish like the AIIMS students agitating, while we're quietly finding out about segregated canteens and so on. We must tackle caste, Er.. he found segregated canteens at AIIMS? That would be ironic indeed. These do exist elsewhere but not at AIIMS, as far as I'm aware srs
