We are made up of the same five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — that constitute the Universe. We are the soil. We are the earth. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. And it is no accident that the words “humus” and “humans” have the same roots.
The debate on the Food Security Act is based on myths on both sides. The government is propagating the myth that it is the largest anti-poverty and anti-hunger programme ever introduced anywhere in the world. The programme is being heralded as Sonia Gandhi’s dream project, and billed as a miracle solution to the agrarian and food crises.
On the other hand, economic pundits are blaming the Food Security Act for the falling rupee and the economic emergency.
The pundits have it wrong, because they are treating the spin as reality.
Source: The Asian Age
“Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more.”
“Producing more, Conserving more, Improving farmers lives.”
These are the promises Monsanto India’s website makes, alongside pictures of smiling, prosperous farmers from the state of Maharashtra. This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.
Source: The Asian Age
The ministry of agriculture had organised a conference on Doubling Food Production from February 1-3. The “eminent speakers” invited were not members of International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) or top Indian scientists. Rather they were spin masters of biotechnology industry who claimed to have founded the anti-GMO movement and openly promoted it. The old paradigm of food and agriculture is clearly broken.
On April 15, 2008, the IAASTD report findings, carried out by 400 scientists over six years, were released. The report has noted that business as usual is no longer an option. Neither the Green Revolution nor the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can guarantee food security. We need a new paradigm of working with the laws of nature and ecological sustainability. Why is our agriculture minister Sharad Pawar defending a dead paradigm and promoting PR men of biotech giants? When the fact is that the emerging scientific paradigm of ecological agriculture has shown that we can double food production while protecting the planet, human health and farmers’ livelihoods.
Source: Al Jazeera
The duty of a state that claims to be democratic is to guarantee safety and freedom to its “weakest citizens”.
The Delhi gang-rape of December 2012 brought to the streets the deep and growing concern about violence against women and the demand for women’s safety. The movement is the voice of women reclaiming their right to safety and freedom, through resistance to all forms of patriarchal power and celebration of women’s peaceful power and energy.
Source: Yes Magazine
Violence against women is as old as patriarchy.
Traditional patriarchy has structured our worldviews and mindsets, our social and cultural worlds, on the basis of domination over women and the denial of their full humanity and right to equality. But it has intensified and become more pervasive in the recent past. It has taken on more brutal forms, like the murder of the Delhi gang rape victim and the recent suicide of a 17-year-old rape victim in Chandigarh.
In India, rape cases and cases of violence against women have increased over the years. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 10,068 rape cases in 1990, which increased to 16496 in 2000. With 24,206 cases in 2011, rape cases jumped to incredible increase of 873 percent from 1971 when NCRB started to record cases of rape. And Delhi has emerged as the rape capital of India, accounting for 25 percent of cases.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019