COW TRILOGY

Leader Cow: ‘That was brutal but had to be done. I’m glad I helped gore that heifer to death!’

New Cow: ‘Oh! What had she done?’

‘She ate holy alfalfa! That’s what she did! Deserved death!’

‘Isn’t that extremist…fundamentalist? Maybe you could have explained…’

‘No! It can only be death for eating holy alfalfa!’

‘But we eat napier grass, and even roadside flowers, so…’

‘I relish napier grass, elephant grass, flowers, plants, everything! But alfalfa is sacred, never forget!’

‘Horses eat alfalfa?’

‘Horses! Don’t talk to me about them! One day we will gore all of them to death!’

‘Leader Cow Ma’am, you got trounced in the farmyard elections.’

‘Nonsense! Pigs voted for pigs, chicks for chicks, goats for goats. Next time they will vote for me!’

‘If there’s a next time. Ma’am, our cows voted against you! You want them all to be black-and-white. Look around, they are all shapes and colours!’

‘Pure cows are black-and-white like me! If not, they have no place here! I’m pure Holstein-Friesian.’

‘No Ma’am, you’re cross-bred… that too by Westerners. Really, you’re foreign to the farmyard!’

‘You’ve got a big mouth. I’ll shut you up for good!’

‘I’m so happy Leader Cow Ma’am is here! All these Angus bulls, Devon heifers, Galloway calves were treating us like nobodies! Now they know we are real cows!’

‘Yes, by Jove! I’m building a cow temple in Kensington and getting real cow-dung to make it holy!’

‘Hey, but you cows are nowhere like Leader Cow. Your mothers were Kangayan, you’re not black-and-white!’

‘I’m black-and-white if I say so! Girs and Red Sindhis have now become black-and-white! Our black-and-white identity makes us proud!’

‘But back home the mood is changing…’

‘Shut up! Heil Fuhrerin! Heil Fuhrerin!’

‘Ducessa! Ducessa! Ducessa!’

ISIS-ization of Hinduism in Three Days

DAY 1

‘Why are all of you in my house?’

‘We have made a list of 1742 unauthorized books in your library.’

‘Unauthorized by whom?’

‘By us, the Pure Hindu Sena.’

‘But they are all great books of world literature!’

‘Just Western rubbish! Why don’t you have the Ramayana?’

‘I do have commentaries somewhere…’

‘Not English rubbish! Ramayana in Sanskrit!’

‘I can’t read Sanskrit.’

‘And you call yourself learned? Burn all these books. Let it be a lesson to everyone!’

‘Can you read Sanskrit, you who will destroy my library?’

‘I’m Sena Chief, I don’t need to. Burn the books!’

DAY 2

‘Yesterday we cleaned out your neighhbour’s library. We come to you because of the noise you are making.’

‘What noise, Sir?’

‘That noise.’

‘Famous piece of classical music, Sir. Bach’s cantata “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

‘So you are a Christian?’

‘No, Sir, I am a Brahmin!’

‘Shame on you! Why don’t you listen to Tyagaraja?’

‘I do Sir, here is ‘Manasa Sadinchene.’ Shall I play it?’

‘Think you are fooling me? Boys, destroy all this Western muck! We will write ‘Purified by Hindu Sena’ on your gate! Thank your Brahmin parents we are not purifying your body – as yet!’

DAY 3

‘This street is troublesome. We had to correct two of your neighbours.’

‘Sir, I don’t listen to western music. I don’t read books.’

‘You are a Brahmin?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Vegetarian?’

‘Of course, Sir.’

‘My advice is, don’t eat western vegetables, cabbage, cauliflower – even potatoes. Ayurveda says they are all bad. A Brahmin should follow ancient ways.’

‘Yes, Sir, from now on.’

‘Good. And, yes, you have two growing daughters? They shouldn’t go out in the evenings. When they go out, they should be fully covered, and you should be with them. Otherwise who is to blame if something happens?’

                                                      ISIS-ization completed

STYLES OF MYSTERY

The modern taste in literature is firmly anchored in mystery, and the grand novel in the style of Dickens, Tolstoy, or Flaubert lies forgotten. But even the fabulously successful Ms Rowling and her Harry Potter books cannot compete with the popularity of Agatha Christie, whose work celebrates her 125^th anniversary this year.  Her 66 books have sold over two billion copies, and have been translated into a hundred languages, a record matched only by Shakespeare and the Bible. Her play, The Mousetrap – which incidentally derives its title from Hamlet – opened in London’s West End in 1952, and continues its unparalleled run at the Ambassador Theatre over all these decades! This iconic play even interested the famous Tom Stoppard to write his own The Real Inspector Hound!

Born in 1890 to an aristocratic English mother and a rich American father, Agatha was educated at home in Torquay, a picturesque little town in Devon. As a child, her interest in mystery was kindled by Edith Nesbit’s famous children’s novel, The Railway Children, which describes the travails of children whose father is wrongly convicted of spying. Her early attempts at writing were rejected by several publishers, just like the first Harry Potter book. Her aviator husband, Archibald Christie, who incidentally had been born in India, thought her writing to be no more than a lady’s diversion.

Her first break came when she created her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in her book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, naming the place after her own home. The book was an instant success. But heartbreak was soon to follow, when her husband sought a divorce, having fallen in love with another woman. Agatha disappeared, and the world sought the famous writer of detective fiction, only to find her ten days later in Harrogate in Yorkshire, distraught and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her writing and her only daughter, Rosalind, helped her recover. She found happiness again in her second marriage to the archaeologist Max Mallowan, many years her junior. With him she travelled to the Middle East, and her experiences there gave rise to a number of books based on the orient. She was to quip later that it was great to be married to an archaeologist for his interest in her grew as she got older!

Just as Conan Doyle grew tired of Sherlock Holmes, she got fed up with Hercule Poirot and his prissy little ways, and his punctilious care for himself and his waxed moustache. She created other characters, but none caught the public’s fancy except for old Miss Marple who made her first appearance in 1940 in The Murder at the Vicarage. Despite her reluctance, Albert Finney made Poirot immortal on the screen. The 1974 movie, Murder on the Orient Express, became a classic, starring an incredible cast of famous actors, including Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Sir John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Lauran Bacall, Michael York, Anthony Perkins, to name a few. Vanessa Redgrave later played the role of Agatha in the film based on her mystery disappearance in 1926. The great character actor, Charles Laughton, also immortalised a short story of hers in the film, Witness for the Prosecution.

Agatha Christie’s most popular book though has neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple in it. And Then There Were None, with no detective, remains a world favourite having been renamed, politically correctly, from its earlier unfortunate title, Ten Little Niggers. Her popularity has rested on her skills as a wordsmith, the unexpected twists she gives to her plots, and the homely little touches she gives in her descriptions of places and people as few male writers can do, and maybe not even PD James.

This month the publishing industry is marketing an Agatha Christie celebration in the port town of Torquay, and undoubtedly it will be very successful in terms of publishing and tourism. But what remains a mystery of the times is the insatiable desire of people for mystery and fantasy. The mystery novel found its birth in the 19^th century with Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone – which was devoured eagerly by the teenaged Agatha – and Emile Gaboriau’s police detective, Monsieur Lecoq. It established itself in the forefront of literature with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books, and swept into America with the exploits of Ellery Queen and Perry Mason. The public perhaps wished to be diverted from the miseries of industrialized urbanization, and their wish was soon enflamed by Hollywood which gave them classical escapist films during the Great Depression. Bollywood has not been far behind in helping us forget reality with the pipe-dreams of fantasy. Even today’s children seem to prefer the magic of Harry Potter to the real mysteries in scientific exploration.

Vithal Rajan, Hyderabad, 15 Sept, 2015

India’s Antique Elite and Their Unsolvable Energy Question

For the first time since the days of the Mahatma, an Indian leader has appealed to the people of India to participate directly in developing the country, and giving a helping hand to the poor. The Prime Minister’s efforts are laudable, and require the full support of all citizens. Unfortunately, unlike Gandhiji, he is unable to shame other leaders for their lavish lifestyle or undeserved perks. Voices have been raised by the middleclass that they see no reason for giving up their LPG gas subsidy when parliamentarians are petty enough to hold on to every possible perk and benefit at great public cost.

A recent NSSO report says that even today, in the seventh decade after independence, two-thirds of rural households still use firewood for cooking, and even the poorer third of urban families. Not only does this ruin the eyes of women, as the Prime Minister so kindly pointed out, but kills over half a million of them every year through respiratory diseases, besides increasing carbon emissions, loss of forest cover, leaching of top soils, water run-offs, floods, devastation, and enfeebling the roar of the tiger, which the elite  are delighted to hear. According to the NSSO calculation, India might need to provide around 15 crore new LPG connections, if we really want to help the poor. If all of the middleclass generously and patriotically cooperate, they can help no more than 15% of poor households, and that is no realistic solution. So what is to be done?

The Government of India earned international brownie points by being the first to establish an independent ministry of renewable energy, but after the applause abandoned it to light-weight politicians who needed a ministerial berth. To make more sure that it would trouble no one anymore, a web of rules and regulations have made its functioning opaque and unworkable.

Despite India being a sunshine subcontinent, the government has done little other than ritualistic moves to promote solar energy. Concentrated Thermal Solar Power units in the megawatt range have been set up in several other countries, including the United States. Spain has over 50 such units, while India is beginning a research project on this technology. Very few of India’s six lakh villages place a demand higher than of 5 kw. Decentralised PV solar units, locally managed by panchayati bodies or people’s associations can help meet most of rural India’s energy needs, but this step could also lead to sharing of some power democratically with the grassroots. However government policy since its East India Company days, despite the ritualistic 73^rd and 74^th amendments to the Constitution in support of such democratic dispersal of power, has firmly believed in tight centralisation of power. So, demand-side management of power needs, while commonplace in developed countries, remains only a lecture room concept in India.

Perhaps, as a gesture towards India’s contribution to the global struggle against climate change, the MNRE bodies like NEDCAP, or its Telangana variant TNREDCL, could do aggressive marketing of the box-type and the parabolic type of solar cookers. Large scale use of such cookers could save everyone a lot of money and reduce firewood consumption by a third, if not by half. It is not beyond the wits of our very clever bureaucrats and bankers to devise a methodology to enable the poor to acquire these cookers and pay back over time. But such sales will afford no profit to our corporate moghuls, or present media-savvy photo ops to leaders. Helping the poor in small ways has not been any leader’s priority, except when voicing his intention to do so at electioneering times. And environment concerns are strictly relegated for international conferences.

ONGC has put up huge placards in airports and other public places in support of the Prime Minister’s call to you to give up your LPG subsidy. This is the wealthiest public sector unit with annual profits in the range of Rs 25,000 crores. Hence it has the capacity to think out new ways of reducing public expenditure and our dependence on fossil fuels. Strangely, despite the usual ritualistic directive that petrol should have 10% additive of ethanol, little is done to achieve this. In fact sugar companies have a disincentive to produce and sell ethanol since the government stipulated purchase price is less than the market price offered by liquor companies for the distillate. It is a known fact that since ethanol is easily miscible with petrol, it could even form 25% of the fuel without affecting vehicle performance. If India were to follow the example of Brazil, where all vehicles run on pure ethanol or ethanol-mixes, several thousand crores of rupees in foreign exchange could be saved. With that money, ONGC could give LPG cylinders to at least a crore of poor households. Vehicle owners would be happy since the cost of fuel would decrease, sugar companies would make better profits, consumer price of sugar would be steady, and several crore farmers growing sugarcane would have more sustainable incomes.

It would be surprising that the authorities are so reluctant to follow the Brazilian path to bio-fuels when clearly so many sectors would benefit. However, it seems the strong liquor lobby is against ethanol use since it might push up the price of liquor they acquire from sugar mills. Governments and politicians are sensitive to their pressure since excise taxes form the greatest part of state revenues, apart from the profitable black market in this industry. Here again well known technology exists which can easily increase liquor production by a factor of ten if sugar companies would increase distillates as balancing products when seasonally there is over production of sugar, decreasing prices. Again, such management would benefit many sectors, including sugarcane farmers who suffer periodically when sugar mills refuse cane.

Such national refusal to utilise available technologies and increase production of energy and profits would be inexplicable if not for the attitudes that dictate decision making among the country’s elite. To take advantage of the different ways of utilizing renewable energy resources the elite must involve many small local and private bodies in decision making. They are aware that this would be the first step in diluting their power, and they refuse to do so. Their vested interest to retain control of the destinies of the country in their own restricting hands makes them ideologically cling to the platonic ideal of ‘philosopher kings’ who would benignly care for the masses. Such an elitist ideology makes them spend unconscionable sums on nuclear energy, which even after several decades has produced very little energy while continuing to pose for millennia a  threat to all life, even under the best of management conditions. Plato conceived his philosophy 2500 years ago when Greeks depended on the work of four slaves for every free man. It is a vast pity that our elite believe in such antiquated ideas stifling progress, and reducing the living standards of the great majority to no better than that of semi-serfdom. 

ODE ON THE DEATH OF APJ ABDUL KALAM

Are there left any more, sons of the soil,

Past the bragging of self-styled nationalists,

In India, a quarter free, still slave to the mighty?

There was one, he died yesterday.

A teacher, born on the very last drop of land,

Poor, Muslim, Tamil, unfashionable,

Unpretentious, still speaking his mother tongue,

Not with condescension but with erudition.

How could he stray into the Indian halls of fame?

He had no patrons, his birth spoke against him.

But surely a good God who loved this ancient land

Spotted one pure of heart who from birth

Would absorb the holy words of Islam, Vedas, and of Jesus,

See the hand of God-Nature in making man, woman, and life

And learn to love to learn and teach

How beautiful life is!

Happiest among children, unassumingly a step ahead

Of the Learned, and the Great of the World.

‘He did not seek for office’ – strangest trait for an Indian!

No, the office sought him, which he took in his quick stride,

To do his duty – ah! An ancient forgotten command

In this, a land given over to self-promotion.

He sought the stars all his life, as many a child has done,

Bound to a faulted earth and blinded belief,

Streets narrowed in fear, death before life is done.

His bold charity of work gave him all he wanted,

To think, to serve, to teach, to love people,

To explore the stars spangled among the simple poor.

Yes, he was the criticized rocket man of the liberal,

Who flung into the bubbling cauldron we call life,

Did not sit on his hands in judgement of others,

But sought truth empetalled in mystery, and still

Blowing quite openly in the wind.

He had no hand in the proud hate of the world,

He did what needed to be done.

He left behind him a name and its path,

A sure confidence that all, all can come out

Of the morass of history and its ill-meaning politics,

That none can hold you down, if you stare them in the face

With a gentle smile, memorably his own,

And quietly take your place at table and care not

Who is to the left or right of you,

Their arrogance, their self conceit, their littleness,

And in happiness stay for duty till called away at last.

Those who come after will with reverence

Know that emptied place almost as a shrine

Once held by a man of – but not quite of – this world.  

A poem of the earth

No matter how far her kind were away

She could let them know her joys and fears.

‘This parasite so long benign is spreading,

Malignant, poisoning life on my skin.

I am afraid!’

They replied in time, though time had no meaning.

‘We know others like this parasite of yours –

It self destructs, soon.’

Happy, she danced away round the sun

Far enough to be cool, close enough to be warm.

How I Met Dwarkinath a great and committed Agricultural Scientist

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.