Our New Roadmaps
Sanjoy Ghose is in our thoughts and in our works. An inspiration now and generations to come. IRMAN by choice. Co-founder, URMUL Trust at Lunkaransar in Thar. URMUL Organizations – Setu, Seemant, Jyoti, Khejdi, Marusthali Bunkar Vikas Samiti etc. Some 10 years later, Sanjoy left the work in the safe hands, and moved on. To found CHARKHA. Then to Majuli. To bicycle his way into the hearts of people who worked with him, people who knew him. His work, vision drives many of us now, in future. An inspiration for NextGens.
My doctor friend, MBV Prasad talks about ‘mixopathy’. Ayurveda is an excellent system of holistic healthcare. Read “Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom” by Acharya Shunya. Ayurveda is an excellent way to maintain the body and prevent disease, with discipline (routine, practices, diet) and restraint. But, we moved on to ignore the enormous repair and regenerative capacity our body is endowed with naturally. Most alternative therapies are built on ‘natural healing’. Majority of the ailments are due to our lifestyle choices and can be corrected by simple lifestyle changes. Once the disease manifests fully in the form of a major structural abnormality, it requires surgery.
A surgeon is good or incompetent does not depend on the degree he/she holds, but the training he/she has received, hand eye coordination and knowledge of tissue handling. Holistic Medicine and alternative therapies need to part of the mainstream medical education. These include: Yoga, Meditation, Music therapy, Hypnotherapy etc.
It is important that we prevent disease by holistic healthcare, health practices, health ecosystem, healthy nutrition-immunity diet. Only as a last resort, one should be going for ‘treatment’, but as early as possible.
Let us drink water as soon as we wake up. Let the sun come in. Let us go in the sun. Everyday. Sooner the better. If we are keen on tea or coffee, let us go ahead. Can we skip sugar, milk? Can we go green? Let us have a good nutritious breakfast every day. Without fail. But not sugars. If ‘proper’ breakfast is not there, go for some quick fruits, salads, nuts, curd etc. Let us catch up on some physical stretches every day. 30 minutes. In the morning to the extent feasible. Yoga, Limb movements. Suryanamaskar. Cycle, Jog, Walk. Down the stairs and up the stairs. Take time to warm up. Leisurely. Do not start on ‘heavy’ or ‘stress’ work very early in the morning. Read a book. Listen to Music. Talk to children. Catch up on ‘things’ in the world. Let us eat multiple times but in fixed times. And let us be sure to sleep well. Not oversleep.
Can we be away from corrupt? Can we say no to corruption? Everywhere. In all its avatars. Forms and Scales.
Timnit Gebru leaves Google. Uses Twitter to announce that. Says Google has forced her out. For asking to be cautious and ethical in the work. Language Models tend to be embedding biases – less sensitive, more homogenization, more elitist. The large datasets are likely to be less audited. Less documented. Making it riskier. May be they go towards manipulating ‘language’. To fool people. Machine translations can be misdirected leading to dangers.
Can we work for human rights, freedom? To all. Can we appreciate that we are all created equal? Can we appreciate that we are endowed with unalienable rights – life, liberty, equity, justice, security, dignity, pursuit of happiness, decent work? Our natural rights?
Farmers seek repeal. Government is willing to amend. Farmers want MSP law. Government is willing to assure. ‘Reform’ without ‘Collectivization, Organization and Strengthening’ is useful to others in the value-chain. So sequence is an issue.
Divakar brings some data from Punjab – C grade grain becomes B grade grain; Some weigh bridges more empty weight and less full weight; 30,000+ registered adtiyas with 300,000 subagents, for 1500 farming villages – 200+ middlemen per village. A Rs.8 lakh Crore business in total.
If MSP is not there, if there are no purchases when prices below MSP, then the markets will not be fair to farmers. Prices may turn out to be less remunerative. MSP Operations and APMCs have this role to play. This is not withstanding their less effectiveness and efficiency. Farmers are no doubt entrepreneurs, but they take calculated risks, try to minimise it as much as possible. If water is there, they go for crops that give assured returns. Why not? Incidentally, most suicides are by cash crop farmers, not by irrigated crop farmers. By the same token, farmers prefer money now rather than later; money for sure, rather than higher value realization in due course. It is an effort in building this trust, the way AMUL has done, for example. Even, Amul is paying daily, and annual bonus, a certainty.
Total subsidies in the country for farmers may be some Rs.3000 Billion/year. Rs.15,000/farmer. Is it high? Can’t we move to giving it directly to farmers? Rather than indirect subsidies.
It is still not clear why these laws do not permit aggrieved farmers approach the courts. Can a farmer read the ‘fine print’ and sign contracts? Will the banks, PACS, etc., meet the farmers’ farm and other credit needs fully? If not, where do they go? Governments cannot abdicate their responsibility to support farmers, build infrastructure for them etc.
What is happening? Are dreams being sold? Are we being sold? Let new road maps emerge in consultations with farmers widely.
In any case, please join the Sri movements locally. Physically. Digitally. Towards animating, facilitating collectives, collective enterprises, farmer-enterprises. Localized, customized, collectivized, communitized movements. For local useful coexistence. In Nature. For Sri. For Amrit, in N, with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of elixir of local useful coexistence lifework – sriyoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar