“Rural Sustainability is a Prerequisite for Urban Sustainability,” Dr Rajendra Singh 

Dr. Rajendra Singh -the Water Man of India needs no introduction. Honoured with the Stockholm Prize in 2015, for reviving the ancient dam technology in the Alwar district of Rajasthan in the 1980s to bring water to 1200 parched villages, Dr. Rajendra Singh has dedicated his entire life to water conservation. Relying on traditional knowledge, local material and the science of common sense, he leveraged community help to rejuvenate nine rivers and restore groundwater levels in Rajasthan.

The Ramon Magsaysay award winner in Hyderabad for a conference, spoke to Sujata C for Daana on the topic of urban-rural linkages, rural reform, permaculture and threats to agriculture.  The conversation got off with a few comments on negotiating the long, winding concrete vines of flyovers, metro lines and the chaotic Hyderabad traffic leading to the obvious question of urban sustainability. Here is the edited interview:

On urban sustainability:

“When the villagers are forced to migrate to cities due to helplessness and hopelessness then cities cannot be healthy. Cities depend on agriculture for their food. Their food comes from the villages. If our rural areas are not healthy, the city can’t be healthy. If the rural areas are not sustainable the Indian city can’t be sustainable. If we want our villages to be self reliant, we have to make them sustainable, the water in the village, the soil, the seeds, the hard work of the farmers, everything is included in this. Without the sustainability of our villages, urban sustainability is not possible.

The way our cities are growing with metros, high-rise buildings and heavy traffic, it is not at all sustainable. The basic necessities of a city come from villages and the cost of transporting to the cities these add to the burden of public health. And the pollution that we create in the process, these put a question mark on the way our cities are growing. The public health of the cities is linked to rural health. To correct all these we have to take the route of sustainable development.

On the link between rural reform and permaculture

The meaning of permaculture is to give respect and love for everything that exists in nature. Our love and respect for agriculture will come when we stop using chemical fertilisers, herbicides to cultivate our food. The name permaculture itself means giving respect to nature as it is while growing our food. The viability of permaculture depends on the fact that there is no contract farming done in our country. It should be a contract farming free country. The biggest threat to permaculture comes from contract farming. The trend of corporate farming will not allow permaculture to grow. They will use any term for their farming – chemical free farming, natural farming, zero budget farming, they will come up with a thousand names, but in reality they will be doing business. This will be very dangerous for our agriculture.

Agriculture is the foundation of Indian life. It is not a business. It is our cultural heritage, our ‘sanskriti’, it is not our business. Agriculture is the bridge between nature and the needs of human lives. Contract farming and corporate farming is going to break this bridge, because the stakeholders will only be interested in profits. They will not be interested in the culture that envelops agriculture. There will be no love for agriculture in contract farming. Those involved will want to grow stuff that brings in more money.

On the culture of agriculture:

It is my belief that if we are talking about agriculture, we have to examine its foundational principle. We have to examine our soil, our ‘bhoo sanskriti,’ its diversity and its potential to grow food that is good for us, good for the soil and the earth. When my soil health, my water health and the health of my land is good, then I will be good. To keep this chain of good health active, permaculture is the entry point, he concludes.

Viewed in the context of the farmers’ march, the intuitive advice from Dr. Rajendra Singh can tackle present day farmers’ woes and will continue to remain relevant in the times to come.

 

Makar Sankranti – India’s Favorite Harvest Festival

Makar Sankranti is one of India’s most popular harvest festivals. Farmers all over India wait till the months of January-February to harvest their crop and express gratitude to god for the year’s harvest.

The name, “Makar Sankranti” is loosely translated to mean “Capricorn Transition”. Thus, Makar Sankranti is celebrated on the day the sun reaches its southernmost dip and then starts moving northwards.

Makar Sankranti is celebrated all over India, and each region has its own unique celebration. For example, the world’s largest gathering of people, the Kumbh Mela, organized in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) is inaugurated with the first dip on Makar Sankranti. Here’s a good photo album on Kumbh Mela.

Punjab:

Punjab celebrates Sankranti as “Maghi”. Taking an early morning dip in the river is considered an essential part of the Maghi celebrations. The Hindus light Diyas or lamps with sesame seed oil, as it is known to invite prosperity and drive away all sin.

Since Maghi is celebrated during peak winter seasons, the food eaten is very rich and high in calories. Slow-cooked Kheer, Khichdi, Jaggery, etc. are main components of the menu during Maghi celebrations.

Rajasthan and Western Madhya Pradesh:

“Sankrant” is a big deal in Rajasthan and MP. Sankrant holds a lot of cultural significance in this region and is the main festival of the year.

A part of the traditional celebrations is to gift 13 married woman any household item. A married woman’s first Sankrant has much value – she is invited to her maternal home along with her husband for a huge feast. Sweets such as Til-Gud Laddu (Sesame-Jaggery Laddu) are prepared and distributed among family and friends.

Kite-flying is considered a part of the tradition in this region. The sky is filled with colorful kites, with people of all ages engaging in kite-cutting contests.

A good old kite store in Rajasthan

Tamil Nadu – 4 days of Pongal

Sankranti is celebrated as “Pongal” in Tamil Nadu. It is celebrated across four days, with each day dedicated to a different god associated with agriculture.

The first day is celebrated as Bhogi wherein farmers express their gratitude to Lord Indra. The other three days are Thai Pongal, Maattu Pongal and Kaanum Pongal.

Pongal is a delicacy prepared as Prasadam for the deities. It is incredibly simple to make and takes about 30 minutes. On Pongal day, women of each neighborhood come out and cook pongal on the streets, marking a celebration of hope, abundance, and sharing.

Women participating in a community pongal-cooking celebration in Dharavi, Mumbai.

 Odisha

Odisha celebrates Sankranti with much enthusiasm and faith. Deities are offered Prasadam prepared using uncooked newly harvested rice, jaggery, coconut, banana, sesame, rasagola, etc.

Apart from this, devotees at the Konark temple pray with much intensity as the sun starts its northward swing. Apart from the usual traditions, there are also a few unique traditions here. For example, people reaffirm their friendship with their best friends during Sankranti.

Assam – Bihu

Assam celebrates Bihu which signifies the end of the harvesting season for the year. The festivities of Bihu last up to a week and are adorned by bonfires and colorful Rangolis drawn everywhere.

Traditionally, the youth build huts made out of bamboo, leaves, etc., and then feast in those huts. Then, the next morning those huts would be burnt.

Assam sees and tastes a lot of delicacies during Bihu – such as a traditional Assamese cake made using Bamboo. Read more about Shunga Pitha

Gujarat

Gujarat sees a lot of vibrance for Sankranti. It is celebrated for two days in this region with the first day being called “Uttarayan”. Skies in major cities are filled with kites of various sizes and shapes. There is a fierce kite cutting competition, and the cord used to fly kites is usually strengthened.

A Common Sight in Gujarat Throughout the Month of January

Winters in Gujarat are cold as well, which means that a lot of cold weather food is prepared during Sankranti, ranging from simple snacks like Chikki, to complicated dishes like Undhiyu.

 Maharashtra

 Makar Sankranti is celebrated in Maharashtra for two days. There is a lot of emphasis on community, hence Maharashtrians distribute Til-Gul Laddus, and wish for the other person to utter only sweet words for the year. Apart from these laddus, Maharashtrians also prepare another delicacy called Puran Poli. You can try the recipe for Puran Poli here.

 Delhi & Haryana

This region views Sankranti as one of the main festivals of the year.

Married women are visited by one of their brothers who brings a gift of warm clothing for her family. She offers sweets to her brother, such as Churma.

Karnataka

For farmers in Karnataka, January-February bring about Suggi, which is the harvest festival celebrated here. In a ritual called Elle Burodhi, girls wear new clothes and visit the homes of friends, family and neighbors with an offering of a small plate of Sankranti offerings. The plate generally consists of white sesame seeds mixed with fried groundnuts, dry coconut and fine cut jaggery.

Among other rituals such as kite flying, one of the most important rituals involves the display of cows and bulls in colorful attire in open fields. The cows are dressed up for the occasion and are taken out for a procession. They are also made to jump over an open fire. This is quite common among farmer communities in rural Karnataka.

Nepal

India’s little neighbor celebrates Sankranti as Maaghe Sankranti. Celebrations involve lots of pomp and show, along with a ton of food cooked as offerings to deities distributed among friends and family. Here’s a very good blog on an authentic Maaghe Sanranti experience in Nepal.

Do add comments about your own cultural practices of celebrating Pongal/Sankranti/Lohri/Bihu. Daana, and all our farmers wish you a very happy Makar Sankranti!

– Sujatha

Water Conservation: Tips for the Home

Water is one of the very basic components that sustain human life on earth. It is used to grow the food we eat, wash, cook, produce electricity, etc. Whatever happens, the levels of usable water are ever decreasing.

Step into poor urban neighbourhoods, or drive twenty miles out, into rural neighbourhoods, a common sight is seeing women walking for miles on end to collect drinking water for their families.

Here is a good article that highlights the need for water conservation, and provides some tips on how to intervene:

 

 

Water Conservation: Things we can do at home

A lot of these are not difficult at all to start. As with any new habit, it takes awareness and perseverance. Soon enough it will become a part of your routine, and you will then wonder how life could have been before it 🙂

– Sujatha

Eco-Friendly Shopping: The Hidden Benefit

One of our articles focused on how we can reduce our plastic consumption. This article takes that intent further, and focuses on our food related shopping, and how we can make it more planet friendly. Of all things one can do around shopping…. why food?

Consider this: We all eat 3 times a day. With a global population of 7 billion, food is the single largest purchase we human beings make.

If we can make even the slightest shift to a more sustainable option in our food, the payoffs are huge.

The American writer Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”. This idea is most appropriate in the context of each one of us choosing what we buy for our families.

We have a few suggestions that you can try out for your groceries/food shopping. As you read through them, you will find that not only are they more eco-friendly, they are undoubtedly healthier. Which goes to prove that what is good for the planet, is good for us (and vice versa). And while it may seem impractical, and daunting, all we need to do is try a few things, cultivate a habit around them, and then pick another set of items to attempt. And with all habits, once it sets, it becomes second nature.

1. Switch to Organic Food Today

Organic food is grown without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers and pesticides are petrochemicals that need tremendous amounts of energy and investment to manufacture, and apply on farms. (Such as the extraction of petroleum, refining, manufacturing, and then in storage and transportation)

The agrochemical industry has a huge environmental footprint, and we don’t need it at all.

Organic farming also nourishes and preserves soil fertility, which is why organic farms produce regular yields year after year, whereas conventional farms need increasing inputs each year as their fertility reduces.

The added benefit is that organic food is loaded with nutrients and bereft of harmful chemicals. This means our own long-term health improves with consuming organic food.

Read the 2013 UN report that categorically explains how small-scale organic farming is the only sustainable way to feed the world.

2. Cut Down on Meat Consumption

Consuming dairy, eggs and meat is inherent in many cultures. However, consumption of animal based foods is inherently inefficient from the point of resources. This issue is multiplied many folds in today’s food system, also called factory farming.

• Huge amounts of food are grown to feed cattle, hens, pigs and lamb. This food if grown for direct human consumption would require much less quantity.
• Creating 1000 calories of food for humans from animals is much more draining on resources such as water and land, as compared to producing the exact same amount from plants.
• All this food (except for organic meat) is again grown with the use of fertilizers and pesticides. In the USA (and then exported to other countries), animal food is predominantly genetically modified corn and soy.
• To increase the efficiency of the factory, animals are kept in tightly packed lots, thus resulting in unsanitary conditions, and animals falling really sick. The industry addresses this by pumping them indiscriminately with antibiotics. (In the US alone 80% of antibiotics manufactured is used for livestock.) And we end up consuming food that was sick and full of antibiotics.
• To increase the quality of the meat (i.e. to quickly grow muscle, to increase milk output etc.), the animals are fed growth hormones on a consistent basis, which ends up in our bodies when we consume them.

Look for meat and dairy that isn’t from a factory (your local butcher, a small vendor of eggs from free grazing chickens). If you cannot eliminate meat, or find good quality non-mass produced meat, remember: even trimming it down to a couple of meals per week will go a long way. Not just on the impact on the environment, but also on your health. And don’t worry about the protein and calcium. Eating a good mixture of fruits, nuts, vegetables and whole grains (like brown rice, whole wheat bread and unpolished millets) delivers all the nutrition that our bodies need.

3. Choose Local Produce When Possible

The more distance food has to travel to your house, the more “food miles” it has. Choose foods that have fewer miles than more. When you buy food that was grown/manufactured far away, it requires energy to store, and transport to get to your home. If it is refrigerated/frozen food, even more.

Buy perishables such as fruits and vegetables in your local farmers market. Why not the supermarket? A supermarket may look hygienic and clean, but vegetables there are invariably bought ahead of time and stored in refrigerated units. This means your local market not only avoids the refrigeration footprint, but also assures you fresh products.

Local produce also helps build more resilient and decentralized supply systems, from the farmer to the market. You also indirectly cut down on the packaging footprint also because these products now do not have to be packaged to travel and survive long distances.

Another advantage to buying local food is that you are supporting local biodiversity. You will end up buying produce that is grown because it is well suited to the local climate.

E.g.: Buying Sesame, Safflower or Groundnut Oil in south India is a breeze because they are very hardy and suited to the climate. The Safflower plant requires virtually no water, and grows all over the arid Deccan plateau.

4. Buy What’s in Season.

To explain why its better to buy in season, lets first look at what is sub-optimal about buying out of season.

Say you want to eat an mango in Seattle in January. The mango harvest in countries like India and Thailand happens between May and July. To satisfy a year-long supply, mangoes are kept in cold storage. The mango you are eating in December has been sitting inside a refrigerated unit for 6 months !!! Would you be able to enjoy its taste? What about its nutrition? And imagine having to waste all that electricity to run the refrigeration unit for 6 months.

Eating seasonal food gives us the benefit of maximum freshness and nutrition, and minimizes having to store it year-long. However, for grains like wheat, rice and millets, these are harvested only once a year, and need some storage that will keep them safe from pests. If we reduce our consumption of grains and increase our intake of seasonal fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts, we will improve our health, as well as reduce our own carbon footprint.

5. Avoid Processed Foods

Nature stores whole food in safe containers: the husk of the grain, the skin/peel of the fruit or vegetable, the kernel of the nut. Eating food that comes directly out of these natural containers has the most nutritional value.

Processed foods are stored in man-made containers: polythene, tin can, glass bottle, tetra pack… the list goes on.

It takes an immense manufacturing industry (read resources of energy, water, land, and leftover polluted air/land/water) to package the food in these containers and ship them to you.

The biggest consideration for any manufacturer while packaging a product, is its shelf life. The longer the shelf life, the greater the chance that the product will be purchased before its expiry date.

Other than grains, lentils, millets, oilseeds, spices and oils, no other food has a long shelf life in a natural form. Hence, to achieve longer shelf life, manufacturers will often strip the product of its nutrition, so that the product does not get damaged by insects/fungus as such. (e.g.: wheat based products widely use processed flour because it doesn’t get affected by pests as much. Processed flour, called all purpose flour is an incredibly unhealthy food item.)

To summarize, an eco-friendly shopping list, is foremost a healthy shopping list. And the 5 suggestions above roll into a simple maxim: Choose local, seasonal, whole, plant-based food.

– Sujatha