Former Supreme Court Judge V. Ramasubramanian is the new chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The selection panel includes the PM and leaders of opposition in both the houses. NHRC investigates human rights violations by the government and public servants.
Badminton world champion PV Sindhu is married. With Venkata Datta Sai, Executive Director, Posidex Technologies, Hyderabad.
Farming, agriculture. Raising living organisms – plants and animals – to produce food, feed, fibre and other products. Crops, trees, forestry, livestock, aqua. A vital part of human life. Key in the rise of sedentary human civilization. Food surpluses allow people to live in cities. Either through owning and working on the farmland, and/or working on others’ lands. Farming started, it is a guesstimate, some 10000-15000 years ago, changing the way we live. From nomadic hunting-gathering to settled farming. Domestication started with animals. Domesticating plants followed. First crops included cereals, wheat, millets, peas, beans, fruits and vegetables. First on the banks of the rivers. Maybe starting with Nile. Bees came along. The Green Revolution series of technology transfers started in the 1940s till late 1970s. To increase yields, productivity. With focused attention on rice, wheat, corn. Yields stopped growing. Resistance increased. Biodynamic agriculture was seeded way back in 1924. The Organic farming manifesto came up in 1940.
Small and marginal farms, 12% land, produce one-third food. 1% farms operate 70% of the world’s farmland. In India, the situation is slightly better. SMFs own 55% of land. As of date, globally, 11 billion tonnes food; 32 million tonnes fibre; 4 billion cubic metres wood. Shifting, subsistence and intensive farming ways. Intensive farming brought in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and more water usage. Subsidies too. Soil degradation. GHG emissions. Water pollution. Climate change and agriculture are interrelated to spiral a vicious cycle. Natural Farming offers a way out.
Former PM Bharat Ratna Charan Singh’s birthday is Farmers’ Day, Kisan Diwas. Champion of farmers, farmers’ wellbeing and rights. He followed the dictum – ‘To achieve noble objectives, our means should also be equally noble.’ He was instrumental in getting the Land Holding Act, 1960 in UP.
Today, the guidelines of the National Mission on Natural Farming are being discussed. Operational. Master trainers, Community Resource Persons, their learning-training-handholding-apprenticeship, daily messages, weekly engagement; willing farmers, who in turn with their neighbours; self-certification, labelling, PGS-NPOP certification, data portal; Branding, Bhaarat Prakrtik label-mark, towards consumer-enterprise-producer-farmworker NF movement; self-managed inputs including seeds, input service providers, collective action, input-output shops, spoke-hub-spoke enterprises; granting local models deepening to variety of farming situations, farmer level research experiments et al. Can we look at NMNF 24-26 as a preparation for 2026-36 NMNF effort? Can we get state, district, field architectures up soon? Can we initiate more CRPs, clusters, in anticipation of 2026-36? Can we seek well thought intensely evolved perspective plans from states, districts? Can we have state N-policies? Can we look at NMNF as one in many required for global-national N-movement(s) at local levels? Now is the time.
Yes, we can. If we coexist, keep flowing. Spirited trusteeship for nextGen. In N? andolanayoga for 7L.
Click here for a compilation of Yogakshemam updates.