I
traversed a long road in life before meeting and becoming an ardent admirer of
Dr. Dwarakinath. In my youth I loved and pursued only literature and the fine
arts. Later, while living in Canada in the 1960s, I became aware, in that
consciousness-awakening decade, that most of the Indians I had left behind in
my mother country were suffering unbearable poverty. I met Gunnar Myrdal, read
his monumental Asian Drama, and
re-educated myself as a Marxist political-economist. The academic world I entered did not seem to
have many answers, and so I decided to work at the grassroots with civil
society.
My
work as the first executive director of the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, now
better known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, introduced me to Bill Mollison,
the founder of the path-breaking concept of Permaculture. He generously gave me
free permission to print his masterpiece, The
Permaculture Designers Manual, which was made possible by an immediate
generous grant by Father Bacher of Miserior, Germany. Mohan Kanda, IAS, then a very knowledgeable
agricultural secretary of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, kindly bought
several hundred copies for distribution to his scientists. It is a telling
comment on our administrative structure that few copies were made use of by
them. A Permaculture Society of India was set up, and I am very glad to report
that Narsanna, who was personally trained by Mollison, is now the best living
expert in India, and he will be hosting the International Permaculture
Conference for the first time in India in Hyderabad in 2017.
It
was also my privilege to welcome the saintly Masanobu Fukuoaka, whose One Straw Revolution and The Natural Way of Farming have closed
the intellectual gap between science and indigenous knowledge. A respectful
audience of ICAR scientists gasped when he informed them that ‘the purpose of
agriculture was not merely to grow crops but to refine the human spirit!’
However,
I was still searching round how best to connect such knowledge with the
grinding poverty and life-threatening issues faced by the small farmer, living
on rain-fed cultivation. I earnestly read Tapan Raychaudhuri, renowned economic
historian, especially in agricultural economics, and also the famous 1889 Volcker
Report of the Royal Chemical Society on Indian agriculture, and came to the
conclusion that the traditional methods used by farmers had not been at fault
but poverty itself was at fault, exacerbated by colonial rule and later neglect
by the independent government. So, the focus of any intervention should be not
any type of technology but whatever might help the distressed farmer to better
his condition.
ICRISAT
had been established near Hyderabad and was then considered the flagship of the
CGIAR system. Many scientists in that institution believed that there was
little hope of producing sustainable livelihoods for rain-fed farmers, and that
their ultimate destiny was to join the urban workforce. But all Indian
economists, planners and politicians are still clueless how this is to be
accomplished for the several hundred million small farmers in the country!
Fortunately, I struck up a friendship with John Wightman, world renowned plant
protection expert, and this has endured through the years. I learned during the
production of a documentary that ecological interventions in pest management
can be made which will put no financial burden on the farmer and which will
also show results within a season.
A
senior ICAR scientist, NK Sanghi, was a family friend. India has lost a rare
dedicated agricultural scientist in his untimely tragic demise. We both decided
to try a field experiment, to manage the attack of the red hairy caterpillar [amsacta albistriga-walker] on castor
crop, an important cash source for small farmers. Lingaiah, a knowledgeable and
dedicated leader of CROPS, an NGO in Warangal, readily offered local support.
The key control method was to destroy the large white phototropic moths as they
emerged from their pupae and before they could mate and lay eggs. This could be
done only by concerted community action – a fundamental social requisite for
any strategy focused on helping small farmers in rain-fed regions. The moths
emerged after a heavy rainfall, and would drown in buckets of water as they
circled a light placed in the field. A problem was regular power outage, so we
successfully tried solar lights, using renewable energy for an ecological
method.
It
is amusing to remember that the greatest problem was educating scientists! They
insisted on using expensive insect traps rather than simple buckets of water.
When finally after a few seasons they agreed to using buckets, they would pour
kerosene to kill the insects rather than use soapy water! The Nobel laureate
Progogine had once convinced me that in nature densities are created by an
initial clustering approach, whether it is urbanisation, termite mounds, or
inorganic matter. I suggested clustering trap crops rather than laying them out
in line, but this was never tried. Nor the ‘dhobi’ advice given by Jeyraj,
former vice-chancellor and pest control expert, that spodoptera on groundnut could be effectively managed by laying out
coarse blue saris on the ground and killing the clustered insects early next
morning! However, what was very successfully tried out was APCOT, an ecological
experiment over a dozen or so villages over six years to reduce pesticide
spraying over cotton crops. NGOs, CRIDA, Novartis [now Syngenta] and AME all
collaborated to permit farmers to make up their own minds. Sprayings were
brought down from over 25 per season to around three. The voracious helicoverpa pest was handled by a
variety of methods, the most ingenious being the inclusion of a line of
coriander, which released a flavourful scent that attracted potter wasps, a
well-known predator of the pest.
The
underlying principle in such approaches is the hallmark of AME, that is, the
least external input for sustainable agriculture. The credit is due to
Dwarakinath’s genius, that he saw the way forward to help hundreds of millions
of India’s small farmers by a process designed and defined by AME: a
collaborative farmers field school where a community participates and decides
together on a seasonal technological strategy; a social situation led process
for improving soil nutrition and pest management; and with all decisions being
taken gradually by the farmers themselves, and none imposed from above. I came
to admire not only his selfless dedication to helping small farmers living on
rain-fed lands, but his management of AME, which shines above most NGOs in its
efficient and spotless record. It is clear to any thinking person that the
country’s future welfare depends on creating sustainability in rural areas,
most of which is rain-fed, and empowering the rural poor. Dwarakinath and AME
have shown how this can be done, without throw-away subsidies. If the
government will only listen, most of the country’s problems can be gradually
solved, and the Indian economic elephant would then stand truly triumphant.
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