Monday, June 2, 2014

Current thoughts on Environment & Agriculture

Current thoughts on Environment and Agriculture

I quote hereunder a couple of issues of my recent thoughts.
1) I firmly believe that there is urgent necessity to clean up the mighty and Holy Ganga not only to get rid of its toxic elements accumulated beyond possibly all limits but also to restore its flow rate, which are complimentary to each other, with the aim to maintain the ecological balance and improve livelihood of inhabitants of a large area of the country. I have tried to address in this context the issue of 'drying up of Ganga' being a major concern. I however concentrated my research efforts in the lower Ganges delta showing colossal damage to areas south of the Farakka barrage especially Calcutta Port & the Sundarbans as well as almost the entire stretch of Bangladesh. I published a scientific paper [ref: H.S.Sen, 2010, The drying up of River Ganga: an issue of common concern to both India and Bangladesh, Current Science, Vol 99(6), pp.725-727] on this issue which explains the situation crisply. The onus is on India, since the mighty river flows through this country and the major interruptions to flow take place at innumerable locations within it, to take initiative and find solutions thereof for the benefit of both countries. How far we are careful to tackle the situation? Besides, I take the opportunity to also invite kind attention of the readers to a book [ref: Rashmi Sanghi (Ed), 2014, Our National River Ganga-Lifeline of Millions, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 415p.], published very recently covering a wide spectrum of issues on mythological, cultural, flow situations including pollution, transportation, etc. threatening the livelihood of millions of peoples all along the stretch. .

It has been my experience over 40 plus years of research as a water management scientist in agriculture is that ecology is an issue grossly undermined by planners and those who executed in almost every sphere of activity, although we keep talking about it profusely. I have no doubt in my mind that the recent horrific experience in Uttarkhand is one such. But the question remains, are we awakened enough in true sense? This issue is not about Ganga or Uttarkhand only. These are merely two examples. What I wish to hint at that the government should review the past cases and for future enforce the issue of maintaining ecological balance in each of our developmental programme in letters and spirit without playing adversely with the Nature. The above issue was referred by me on an occasion earlier also to the Hon'ble President of India on 24 August 2013, and his office was kind enough to refer it the Ministry of Environment, GoI. I have no knowledge if this has received any attention by the latter so far.

2) Turning attention of the readers on agriculture and allied activities, it has been  observed that there is dwindling growth keeping in view of continued decrease of its contribution to the country’s overall GDP. The evidence strongly suggests need for increasing productivity to feed the booming population vis-à-vis the trend for decreasing per capita agricultural land availability at a rate seemingly very difficult to attain with the help of improved practices at hand. It is, therefore, imperative in this context to exploit value-addition of all agricultural commodities for which a master plan be developed not only to encourage farmers towards increased profitability with direct access to market in agricultural sector, but also to solve to a great extent the problem of unemployment in the rural areas. A fairly detailed analyses in support of the same are available (under consideration for publication) through research conducted by me and a few of my colleagues suggesting thereby that agriculture & allied activities have the potentiality to probably become the greatest commercial hub using small and medium scale entrepreneurs. A very large section of unskilled and semi-skilled population in the rural sector may be utilized if properly planned.  

H.S.Sen