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RECESS – The Human RO Plant Spreading alcoholism Breaking the last taboo26 TaTav gyan 46 SOCial mEnaCE 50 HEalTHCaRE

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ISSN 2454-437X

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Deepening farm crisis

Coupled with an ever-growing population, the food crisis is

assuming alarming proportions in the country. agricultue in india is

undergoing a structural change leading to a debacle situation

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Editorial

TO FLAKE IT OUT

After Bihar, which became fourth state in the coun-try to ban alcohol, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa has announced the phased prohibi-tion of alcohol if she is voted back to power. Bi-

har enforced total prohibition on all sale and consumption of alcohol on April 5. While most of ladies in the state gladly received the decision, the imposition of the ban, however, has put usual drinkers in a fixation.

On April 6, the first day of the ban, a Police constable, in-capable to abstain his favourite brand of alcohol, allegedly killed himself. Soon afterwards, media outlets reported that two men struggling with alcohol withdrawal symptoms died at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) hardly days after the ban was put into execution.

According to famous sociologist MN Srinivas, prohibi-tion of alcohol was actually a Sanskritic act, like that of cow

Prohibition will ultimately fail as it failed in gujarat. it may remain as a law, but drinkers will find a way around that law, the police will become criminalised and the state will miss out on revenue

slaughter. Actually, he meant that whatsoever explanation was given, the Indian impulse to prohibit generally came from a Brahminical sentiments.

No surprise, even the makers of Indian Constitution ar-gued two major issues - beef ban as well as alcohol prohibi-tion, on 24 November 1948. After Kerela, Nagaland, Laksh-deep and Gujarat, Bihar has tried to follow the complete ban of alcohol.

In my personal experience, Gujarat has been a classic ex-ample of ban on papers only. Alcohol is freely available in the state because the police has been compromised at every level.

As a journalist, on my several visits to the state, we have come across several occasions, where alcoholic drinks were openly served to us in a confined area. The state has desper-ately made exceptions because total prohibition is impos-


Editorial

Praveen K [email protected]

sible. Middle class carry ‘allowance’ which permit them to drink for ‘health reasons’. This is obviously largely a crooked exercise. Nevertheless, I have not visited Bihar after the ban has been administered. But, I have friends in journalism, as well bureaucracy and politics, only time will validate how successful the ban has been in the state.

What does alcohol do to our brains? A closer look at the biology behind the addiction reveals that it is not merely about the happy buzz that a drink or two might bring. Alcohol consumption, especially in heavy drink-ers, ‘rewires’ their brains, affecting how neurotransmit-ters – chemicals that transmit signals between nerves – function. Adjusting to an alcohol-free life, thus, can

the 1920s, prohibition produced big mafia gangleaders like Al Capone, who corrupted the police in several cities and practiced its own rule.

If prohibition keeps being unsuccessful, why do states keep trying to accomplish it? Out of the understanding that it induces a better and stronger moral society. This is also a spurious argument. See around the world at some of the countries of Europe, which have no prohibi-tion, and those of the Arab countries, of which many do. Which are more moral and better societies? And which one of them does India want to emulate?

As a cover story, we have covered the grave situation the country is facing in terms of distress in the farm sec-tor. Coupled with an ever-growing population, the food

The rate of growth of agricultural output is gradually declining in the recent years. The relative input of agriculture to the gDP has

been declining over time increasingly

be an agonising and long-drawn process that might re-quire medical intervention. Prohibition will, of course, ultimately fail in Bihar as it has failed in Gujarat. It may remain as a law, but drinkers will find a way around that law, the police will become criminalised and the state will miss out on revenue.

Globally, the alcohol ban has not succeeded any-where in the world. Its three elementary aftermaths are to send the alcohol economy oblivion, bereaving the state of excise revenue, to corrupt the police and to criminalise the occasional drinkers. In United States in

crisis is assuming alarming proportions in the country. Agricultue in India is undergoing a structural change leading to a debacle situation. The rate of growth of agricultural output is gradually declining in the recent years. The relative input of agriculture to the GDP has been declining over time increasingly. The performance of agriculture by crop categories also clearly indicates the slowing down process of agriculture in India. Rural Con-nect Team assesses the agriculture sector of India - the journey of food grains, its distribution model and quan-daries at large.

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All information in this magazine is obtained from sources that the man-agment considers reliable, and is disseminated to readers without any responsiblity on our part. Any opinions or views on any contemporary is-sues by columnists are their views and are not necessarily been endorsed by the publication. Printed & Published by Pratyush Kumar Singh at Capital Offset, Nayatola, Patna-800004 and published at 4 A/8, Jagdamba Path North S. K. Puri, Patna - 800013. Editor: Praveen K Singh All rights reserved by Anchor Media Pvt Ltd throughout the world. Repro-duction without prior consent is strictly prohibited and is a punishable offence. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of comptent courts and forums in Bihar only.

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Editor-in-ChiefPraveen K Singh

Political EditorManoj Verma

Senior EditorMallika Singh

Chief of BureausAbhijeet Verma (Bangalore), N Asokan (Chennai), Ratnesh Anand (Patna), Santosh Tiwari (Ranchi), Deepak Kumar (Luc-know), Azad Chisti (Hyderabad), Pallavee Sinha (New Delhi)

Consulting Sports EditorVVSN Rao

Associate EditorsMadhukar Swayambhu, Naveen Verma, Ashok Chaturvedi

ReportersSaurabh Kumar, Kumar

Business Development Department Prakash S, Rakesh Kumar Singh, Ajay Singh (Consultant)

Creative Department Chunnilal Prajapat

Photo Department Subhash Barolia

Circulation DepartmentAshok Kumar

Consultative CommitteeSubhash Sinha, Bhagwat Anilanand Saraswati, Dr. Ajay Kumar, Abhay Kumar, RRP Sinha

Trainee Gyandeep Pandey

www.ruralconnect.in

cover story

Deepening farm crisisCoupled with an ever-growing population, the food crisis is assuming alarming proportions in the country. Agricultue in India is undergoing a structural change leading to a debacle situation. The rate of growth of agricultural output is gradually declining in the recent years. The relative input of agriculture to the GDP has been declining over time increasingly. The performance of agriculture by crop categories also clearly indicates the slowing down process of agriculture in India.

26tatav gyan

RECESS – The Human RO PlantMadhular Swayambhu compares human migration with reverse osmosis. He says how do we generate that pressure, which is higher than the natural osmotic pressure of leaving a low opportunity area for a higher opportunity area

C o n t e n t s


C o n t e n t s50

54

HeaLtHcare

state

Breaking the last taboo

The issues of Kashmir

InnovatIon

Innovating lifestyle 42

38

Editorial 2Inbox 6NEWS DIGEST 10Photo Feature 58Reminiscence 60

Rural innovations are extremely important since they solve rural problems by using local resources in an efficient manner. Reports Anil Kumar

FarM toUrIsM

Village tourism

30

DaIry

Dairy needsIndia has transformed from a country of acute milk shortage to the world’s leading milk producer due to government initiative known as Operation Flood from 1970 to 90s. However, the growth has slumped to less than 3 percent in recent years, raising cause for concern.

Even the makers of Indian Constitution had argued two major issues - beef ban as well as alcohol prohibition

Slowly and surely, rural tourism initiatives in India are connecting the present to the past, the avenues to the gallis, and people to people, making history, culture, craft and tradition relevant in a contemporary context. Reports Ratnesh Anand

SPREaDIng alCOHOlISm socIaL Menace

From a taboo topic it could do with becoming more mainstream, trade its grimly pronounced death sentence for silver linings, Anjali Awasthi discusses sociological barriers in cancer management

Kashmir has been a hot topic for a long period now. Here’s an account of the state through an eye of a Kashmir-based journalist Junaid Rather

46


For latest updates on rural India visit: www.ruralconnectindia.com

We solicit your comments and suggestions. Kindly send us your feedback at: [email protected]

There is a law in India that provides for marginalised groups to receive free legal aid. That includes legal awareness training as well as legal aid for disputes in court, legal aid for disputes to be negotiated in Lok Adalats (People’s Courts, a forum to promote voluntary settlement of cases out of court). The law is the Legal Services Authority Act 1987. Under it, each district in India has a Legal Services Authority (LSA) required to organise legal aid camps, among other activities. They report to State LSAs, which report to the National LSA. Many, many people are entitled to free legal aid in India. Women, children, and people with disabilities are entitled to free legal aid. However, not much is being done. I request your magazine to raise these issues also on relevant platform.

Vishnu Shankar Champaran, Bihar

The governments of the day seem to

be lethargic regarding the inevitable reforms. The land use policy of India is still not very clear and this enhances corruption in revenue departments across the country. The drastic rise in population has unfurled numerous problems with regards to land use and worst suffered are the common lands. There is a dire need for a clear policy for the protection of common property. Administration all across the country is relying only on the precedences of Supreme Court and do not have any clear law to deal with the lands of common use. I believe the legislature

must bring a strong law in this direction.

SR Bansal Gurgaon

Efforts are needed to identify appropriate and effective institutional vehicles for development of non-farm sector policy and interventions for creating employment opportunities. Many strategies and programs to promote RNFE have been formulated in various countries. China’s labour-intensive township and village enterprises (TVEs), for example, often described as the “engine of growth” behind that country’s remarkable growth during the past decades represents the vanguard in China’s new capitalism. The TVEs are hybrid institutions generally unusual alliances between TVE entrepreneurs and local government officials (acting in the capacity of “owners” of TVE enterprises). In this regard, the role of government is crucial, especially in the provision of necessary infrastructure and other support services in the country. It is also vital to improve the marketing links between the village entrepreneurs and the larger business firms located in the towns/cities

Amit KumarNoida

In many ways, it has been a roller coaster ride for politicians and political parties, savouring peaks and reeling under the impact of utter despondency in the shallowest of troughs. Up one day, down another, downcast a third, shooting yourself in the foot the next, the whirligig has been most amusing at one level In fact, every time the Congress or the BJP has held the whip hand on some issue, this has dissipated rapidly courtesy a self goal making the gains short lived. The magazine has truly covered the rural mindset of India. Elections in India have a multiplied role and affects all across the sector. The story is good reading and has several facts which are unknown to many.

Rakesh Shukla Lucknow

Despite India’s Green Revolution

of the 1960s and 1970s, hunger and poverty are still endemic, especially in rural areas. The Green Revolution developed pest-management products, but in a linear way. Scientists conducted research, which agricultural extension workers translated into technologies, ready to be delivered on farmers’ fields. Agri-businesses still use this production model. But while some improvements have been achieved, these production


iNBoX

Launched the Stand Up India scheme which facilitates bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and women borrowers setting up greenfield enterprises in the non-farm sector. As part of the launch event in Noida, distributed 5,100 e-rickshaws under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana. Mudra scheme refinances loans of up to Rs 10 lakh given by lending institutions to small borrowers for non-farm income-generating activities. E-rickshaws will be provided to those who do not own rickshaws, or take these on rent. Stand Up India scheme is going to transform the lives of people from the Dalit and tribal communities. As part of the Stand Up India scheme, the government has asked each bank branch to distribute at least one loan to an SC/ST entrepreneur and one loan to a women entrepreneur. With 1.25 lakh bank branches in the country, the scheme would help 2.5 lakh such entrepreneurs to set up businesses in the country. Loan approval letters to 10 such entrepreneurs were given on the occasion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

methods have largely failed to reach resource-poor farmers. For example, small-scale farmers are often unable to use agri-chemicals appropriately, and sometimes even become victims of their toxicity — either because they cannot read or do not understand the languages on the labels, or because they lack necessary protective equipment such as masks and gloves. Rural Connect is truly an influential magazine on rural issues. I wish luck to the team.

BP Sinha Samastipur

The basic principle involving crop insurance is that loss incurred by a few is shared by many in the area. Also losses incurred in bad compensated by resources accumulated in the good years. The uncertainty faced by the individual farmers is transferred to the insurer through their participation in large numbers, for which benefit, the insured farmers pay a risk premium. Total loss is shared by participating farmers over a wide area, i.e. horizontal spreading of risks over a wide area and vertical spreading of risks over many years. The risk premium reflects the group risk assumed by the insurer an indemnity is liable to be paid to the farmer when the loss is incurred due to causes beyond his control, as long as he maintain the insurance contract valid by paying the premium without default .

Ramsurat KumarPalamu, Jharkhand

Your magazine highlights the importance of traditional rural media for effective communication as Indian society has a wide

heterogeneous socio-cultural amalgamation. The best part of traditional rural media is that it connects with the hearts and minds of the rural masses. The column has rightly presented the fact that a varied media mix is much needed to convey messages to rural consumers. There is also a need to integrated the ways if communication that fills the need gap and delivers in building reassurance and trust, which is very vital.

RVS Rao Hyderabad

I would like to mention that a look at the current marketing scenario indicates that many of the marketing issues such as demand assessment, brand identification, product promotions etc. have not been extended the desired attention. However, a few attempts have been made which merit attention. First and foremost is that most of the products, produced by rural artisans, are sold in local rural haats. Besides these haats, NGOs and the governments at various levels have also helped in promoting the sale of these products outside the confines of the local environs. For example., exhibitions and melas are organised in major urban centres to publicize and promote the sale of these products. In many states, the State Government bodies have made contribution to the sale of these products by extending preferential treatment to these products at the time of procurement. Even in the above cases where an attempt has been made to address the issues, the results have not been very forthcoming.

Rohit RaiVadodra

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Government constructing 5 lakh farming pools, says PM Narendra Modi

With the water table dropping substantially in some parts of the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the government is constructing five lakh ‘farming pools’ even as he

urged people to resort to water conservation methods like creating small reservoirs. In his monthly radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’, he also asked the farming community to use less fertilizers and more modern technol-ogy, like the Farmers’ App, for their benefit. He spoke about various other issues including asking students to develop some skills during their vaca-tions and urging people to work for defeating diabetes and eradicating TB from the country. Referring to the agriculture sector, he said water table is falling in parts of the country and said small reservoirs should be created to conserve the essential commodity. He said the government, on its part, is constructing five lakh ‘khet talab’ ( farming pools) across the country. Under MNREGA also, efforts are being made to conserve water, he said, as he pitched for a people’s movement for saving water.

Petition seeks complete farm loan waiver in Maharastra

Former MLA and an agricul-turist from Nanded district Shankar Anna Dhondge

has approached the Aurang-abad bench of the Bombay high court seeking directions to nine respondents, including the state and Union governments, to take effective steps to protect the lives of poor farmers and cattle. The move comes at a time when farmer suicides continue unabated in the parched region. As many as 253 farmers have committed suicide in different districts of Marathwada in nearly three months this year. Almost every district has reported farmer suicides; with Beed district reporting the highest number of suicides (45). “Notices have been served to both the state government and the Centre. farmers committing suicide in each village.’

First organic farming university is coming up in Gujarat

Organic farm-ing in India is all set to get

a boost. The govern-ment is all set to open a University dedicated to organic farming. Gujarat government will set up country’s first university exclusively focussing on organic farming, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel said. It is aimed to help farmers to switch to unconventional methods of farming.Announcing this at a farmers rally held on the outskirts of city yesterday, Patel said, “Farmers should now switch to organic farming and its ways from conventional method of farming. Gujarat government has decided to set up country’s first university focusing organic farming.” State agriculture minister Babubhai Bokhiria said state govern-ment is committed to promote organic farming and in order to achieve it.

Lead

Farmers from 16 states bat for GM mustard

More than 1.38 lakh farmers from 16 states including Karnataka have submit-ted a petition to the Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar in favour of genetically modified (GM) mustard. Members from six national farmer

organisations have now formed a consortium (Rashtriya Progressive Kisan Samiti)."The consortium that collectively represents over 8 crore farmers across these 16 states is demanding non-politicisation of commercialisation of GM Mustard which is currently under review with Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC)," a press note issued by the consortium read. Former MP and Kisan Co-ordination Committee chair-man Sardar US Mann, poiting out to the advantages, said in the statement: "As per the initial studies, GM Mustard has the potential to increase yield between 20-30 per cent which is significant enough for the commercial cultivation of the crop." He said that this technology will also reduce the import bills, increase farmer's income .

NEWS diGESt


NEWS diGESt

CSR 30% of CSR spend to be made mandatory for Swachh Bharat

The government expects to garner close to ₹2 lakh crore of funds over the next three years from India Inc by making 30 per cent of their spend on corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory in projects such as ‘Swachh Bharat’. The

proposal of making 30 per cent of CSR spends on Swachh Bharat is likely to be an-nounced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May, when the ruling government celebrates its second anniversary, said a senior official. “The government is evaluat-ing lot of time-bound projects, which are being identified right now and for that it needs lot of funds. It (government) is eyeing to mandate 25-30 per cent of CSR spends by corporates spending on such projects,” a senior government official close to the development said. Even the companies, which are already doing a lot of work through their CSR activities, would be asked to mandatorily take up certain projects, for this purpose. For example, a company doing CSR towards sewage or clean drink-ing water in a few cities would be made mandatory to do them in other cities too.

CSR spending less than 0.5% of what govt spends on social sector

On 1 April, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Rules complete two years of existence. The two years have been a learning curve for all stakeholders. They

have also seen an ever-increasing number of claims being made to funds available under the head. Given the level of interest, one would think that the corpus available under CSR is large. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are actually minuscule when compared to what the govern-ment spends on the social sector. From the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Digital India initiatives to the Indian Railways, every government scheme and ministry has been urging private companies to deploy CSR funds. “Everyone wants a share of the CSR pie without understanding the scope or

spirit of the law,” said K.K. Upadhyay, head of CSR at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Indus-try (Ficci). The CSR Rules state that firms with a net worth of Rs.500 crore or revenue of Rs.1,000 crore or net profit of Rs.5 only

‘Linking leadership with CSR programmes delivers high impact’

When organisations include social responsibility programmes within their leadership develop-ment efforts, it results in a positive impact on

overall engagement and performance, says a report. According to a global study released by the Hay Group division of execu-tive search firm Korn Ferry, across all lead-ership levels, an aver-age of only 36 per cent of employees are “highly engaged”. Leveraging a social responsibility agenda to develop leaders can help reverse this trend, it added. Around 87 per cent of respondents say that linking an organisation’s social re-sponsibility efforts to leadership development has a positive impact on overall engagement and performance, according to the survey, which includes data from more than 7,500 business and HR leaders in 107 countries. However, only 59 per cent of respondents say their organisations actually link the two. “If an organisation wants to win the current war for talent and retain valuable employees, then it needs to ensure that they constantly feel inspired.

Corporates could also contribute CSR funds to PM’s Relief Fund: FM Jaitley

Corporate Social Responsibility activities have turned out to be a successful experi-ment as over 75% amount has been spent in 2014-15, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the corporates could also contribute to Prime Minister’s Relief Fund

for use during natural calamities. Replying to supplementries, he said CSR amounts cannot be spent for any political activity and if any amount is spent in that manner, it cannot be a legitimate CSR activity. “It is a successful experiment which has started because in the first year over 75% of the amount under CSR has been spent,” Jaitley said. During 2014-15, the first year for CSR, the 2% profits of 460 companies comes to around Rs 8,347.47 crore, of which 75.92% has been spent for CSR activity during the year,” he said.


SBI lowers lending rates based on new formula

State Bank of India has taken the lead in setting lower lending rates based on the Marginal Cost Lending Rate system that will benefit millions of borrowers. The largest lender with a fifth of the market share announced MCLR rates for

different tenors ranging from 8.85 per cent for overnight rates to 9.35 per cent for three years and above. The bank has pegged the home loan rates at 20 basis point over the one-year MCLR rate of 9.20 per cent. While SBI has taken the lead, others such as Bank of India and ICICI Bank are likely to follow suit. The measure is esti-mated to move as much as Rs 1.2 lakh crore of demand for funds to banks from the debt markets, says India Ratings. “The new borrower will save about Rs 600 per month on Rs 1 crore loan,” said Arund-hati Bhattacharya, chairman of SBI. The reset clause of one year for home loaners is “it’s a long-term loan and quite a largish amount of SBI’s resources are in one-year bucket,” she said.

BaNKING

Haryana budget focuses primarily on rural education

The Haryana budget for the financial year 2016-’17, presented by

the state finance minister Capt Abhimanyu, focused on the rural sector, increasing job opportunities and giving a boost to education and health sectors. The budget estimate for the next fiscal increased to Rs 13,494 crore against Rs 11,444 crore in the revised estimate of 2015-’16. Over 13 per cent of the budget was earmarked for agriculture and allied sectors. To strengthen the Make in India programme, the government is moving towards vocationalisation of sec-ondary education. Ten vocational trades have been started in 490 government schools. The budget outlay for Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan has been increased by 20 per cent. Under the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan, a centrally spon-sored scheme for funding of state Universities, an outlay of Rs 166 crore has been made, an increase of 988 percent.

From schools to universities, Modi plans overhaul of education

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suggested a series of structural reforms in education, ranging from schools being mandated to display grade-wise learning goals

for each class for which Niti Ayog has been entrusted to recommend overhauling of University Grants Commission and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). School students will be asked to evaluate their teachers and a university may be started for teacher training. In a meeting that the PM held with Niti Ayog and HRD top brass, includ-ing minister Smriti Irani, a series of decisions were taken. A detailed outcome-focused presentation was made by Niti Ayog. A senior HRD official said, “Access to school education has more or less been achieved. The problem is with quality.

edUCaTION

How corporate India tackled the sanitation challenge

Construction of toilets by companies as part of CSR has received much attention since the rules came into force. A low down on what companies have learnt from the expe-rience The Swachh Bharat Mission aims to see India free of open defecation by 2019.

The CSR Rules require companies with a net worth of Rs.500 crore or revenue of Rs.1,000 crore or net profit of Rs.5 crore to spend 2% of their average profit in the past three years on social development-related activities listed in Schedule VII of the rules. Bharti Foundation, which announced that it would make Ludhiana district free of open defecation. To that end, it surveyed the district and planned to construct around 21,000 toilets across 900 villages. In January 2016, the foundation has completed more than 10,000 individual household toilets and plans to build the remaining 11,000 by the end of FY2017. During 2015-16, Dabur set out to build 1,000 household toilets across 26 villages of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. By February 2016, 1,003 household toilets had been constructed.

NEWS diGESt


NEWS diGESt

High interest rates will make Indian economy sluggish: Arun Jaitley

Justifying slashing of interest rate on small saving instru-ments like PPF, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said interest rates in India are “extraordinarily” high and the

country risks becoming the most sluggish economy if lend-ing rates continue to rule high.The existing tax-free interest rate of up to 8.7 per cent on small saving instruments translates into an effective interest of 12-13 per cent on deposits. Correspondingly, the lending rate, which is always a notch above rate, would be 14-15 per cent, he said.“On small savings, India’s interest rates are extraordinarily high. And high interest rate prevents growth,” he said.“Where in the world you get 12.5 per cent return of inter-est? So if deposit rates become 12.5 per cent, then what should lending rates be, 14 to 15 per cent? You will become the most sluggish economy in the world, if lending rates are 14 to 15 per cent,” he added.

SBI seeks merger of 5 rural banks in N-E

Five regional rural banks (RRBs) in the Northeast un-der the sponsorship of State Bank of India (SBI) are to soon be merged.

The five RRBs are Arunachal Pradesh Rural Bank, Megha-laya Rural Bank, Mizoram Rural Bank, Nagaland Rural Bank and Langpi Dehangi Rural Bank (based in Assam), said an insider.The proposal was recently made by SBI, which has asked the RRBs to seek board approvals. The merger requires approval by the state and central governments. SBI holds a 35 per cent stake, the Centre 50 per cent, and the respective state government 15 per cent in each of the five RRBs.SBI could not be reached for comments.The merged entity would have a deposit base of Rs 3,578 crore, with advances of Rs 1,736 crore. Total net profit of the five banks on March 31, 2015, was Rs 44.52 crore. Of the five, only Nagaland Rural Bank reported losses last financial year.

Raising priority sector lending target will affect bottomline

The 25 per cent increase in the priority sector lending target for regional rural banks (RRBs) has not gone down well with them. These banks want the target to be brought on par with commercial

banks as more number of players have either emerged (Bandhan Bank and IDFC Bank) or are in the process of emerging (10 small finance banks) in the banking space which can share the responsibility of lending to specific segments of the economy. According to Reserve Bank of India’s revised guidelines on priority sector lending (PSL), with effect from January 1, 2016, RRBs have to meet a higher PSL target. Under the revised target, 75 per cent of their total loans have to be given to the priority sector, against 60 per cent earlier. Commercial banks have priority sector lending target of 40 per cent.Priority sector lending includes loans given to agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises, education, housing, weaker sections, social in-frastructure and renewable energy segments. The issue of cutting the PSL target was discussed at a review meeting of RRBs in mid-January.


In rural health, Gujarat among BIMARU statesAlthough the Gujarat government claims to be giving incentives to doctors working in remote areas, the state is facing a shortage of specialists like gynecologists and paediatri-cians, to the extent that even BIMARU states -Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh -are better off with regard to healthcare facilities and infrastructure.This specialist shortfall particularly affects the health of mothers and children, which is apparent with the so called developed state, reporting a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 127 and an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 36 according to the figures last released in 2013. MMR is the number of mothers dying per 1,00,000 live births. IMR is the number of infants dying in their first year for every 1,000 live births. Gujarat has the fifth highest shortfall of specialists including surgeons, gynecologists, physicians and paediatricians among 36 states and Union Territories in terms of numbers.

HeaLTHCaRe

Will work anywhere, give us facilities: Doc

In March, the government made it mandatory for all government doctors to work in remote areas for five years. Those who have been working in taluks of one district for

more than a decade can take a transfer to other districts, but they all have to serve the rural population through PHCs.”We are willing to work in any part of the state. If we have to shift to rural areas with our families, our children should have access to good schooling. The government should provide us basic amenities like uninterrupted power and water supply,” said Dr Madhukar BS, Ayush medical officer.

Rural govt clinics face shortage of docs in Karnataka

Even as the education hub of Karnataka continues to pro-duce an impressive number of medical practitioners year after year, government hospitals and primary health centres

especially in rural areas are facing severe shortage of doctors and specialists. In Dakshina Kannada’s 76 rural health centres about 30% of doctors’ posts are lying vacant. As many as 139 posts of doctors have been sanctioned for four taluk hospitals (TH), eight community health centres (CHC) and 64 primary health centres (PHC) in the district. Of them, 38 posts are remaining vacant. This includes the posts of reproductive and child health (RCH) officer and Aids control officer. The government has sanctioned 48 posts for taluk hospitals and of them 23 are vacant. Likewise, 22 posts have been sanctioned for CHCs and of them only 13 are filled. The situation is slightly better in primary health centres for of the 69 posts of doctors, only six are vacant.

All’s not well with primary healthcare in rural areas

There’s some turmoil brewing in the corridors of primary health centres (PHCs), the

state’s first line of defence against ill-health. With the scrapping of the Arogya Bandhu scheme, the future of 52 PHCs which were handed over to private medical colleges and NGOs is uncertain. The ambitious project sought to use the PPP concept to cater to healthcare needs of the rural populace. But its withdrawal has created a huge shortage of healthcare professionals and led to disruption of services. The government, though, has vowed to fill the vacancies.PHCs cater to the poorest of the population in remote areas, which can neither afford expensive treatment nor travel long distances to reach doctors in urban areas. With most of the MoUs with private agencies set for termination by this year-end, the government is racing against time to ensure the PHCs don’t remain non-functional.

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Maharashtra first state to link col-leges to national cancer grid

In a major step towards improvement of infrastructure for cancer cure, Maharashtra tied up with the Tata Trusts Thursday to link all government colleges and

medical colleges to the national cancer grid for uniform cancer profiling and quality treatment. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Tata Trusts chairman Ratan Tata signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for this collaboration at Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai. On the lines of a similar grid developed in the United States, the Tata Trusts has established a national cancer grid that links all existing and proposed cancer care centres to create a uniform line of treatment for cancer patients across the country. Maharashtra is the country’s first state to join the initiative. He said that another MoU for development of the country’s first state-run bone marrow registry in Maharashtra was also executed with the Tata Trusts. “This will be a huge gift of hope for patients suffering from blood cancer, sickle cell, thalassemia, and other fatal diseases,” said the chief minister.

Govt health mission records dramatic surge in surgeries

In the five years after 2009, “major surgeries” jumped manifold: 979% in Maharashtra, 470% in Karnataka, 400% in Bihar and 258% in Jammu and Kashmir.

There has been a dramatic rise, in some states almost ten-fold, in the number of surgeries under the National Health Mission across India between 2009-10 and 2014-15. Part of this surge is explained by better surgical intervention in the health care system but experts caution that there may also be the possibility of “inappropriate” surgeries being performed under existing insurance and incentive-based schemes like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) and Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK). In the five years after 2009, “major surgeries” jumped manifold: 979% in Maharashtra, 470% in Karnataka, 400% in Bihar and 258% in Jammu and Kashmir. Major surgeries are defined as surgeries that require spinal or general anaesthesia. The figures are for procedures performed at district hospitals and include Caesarean sec-tions, hysterectomy, appendix removal, gall bladder, abdomi-nal perforation surgeries, and various emergency surgeries.

SBI becomes leader in digital bankingState Bank of India, country’s largest bank, has managed to migrate about a tenth of its 280 million customers to the internet platform. Fighting a long battle in the technology space, SBI plans to take its branch network to 17,260 by setting up 560 new branches during this fiscal, of which 200 will be fully digitised. According to Manju Agarwal, deputy managing director in charge of corporate strategy & new businesses, it is hardly a challenge. “We are close to being the leaders in the digital banking space,” she says. Though a late entrant, SBI is in a hurry to take over the space which is getting crowded by private banks and the new set of payment banks. Agarwal said, “Considering that majority of our customers are in rural and semi-urban areas, that’s a very decent number. We have 26 million internet banking customers, of which around 25 million are retail customers and remaining, corporate customers. Total internet banking transac-tions in a year are about Rs 130 crore.” SBI’s site ‘onlinesbi.com’ is the world’s eighth biggest finance site and the only bank registering 846.6 million average monthly visits. SBI is also the third most searched site, after IRCTC and Flipkart as per Google Search Trends Calendar Year 2014 and 2015.


Why India lags in innovation

International patent applications filed from India dropped to 1,423 last year—as compared to Japan’s 44,235, China’s 29,846 and South Korea’s 14,626 in the

same periodPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Make in India ini-tiative seems to be a grand success. It has notched up over-seas investment commitments of more than $400 billion over the past two years. India will have turned a new leaf in attracting foreign direct investment if these commitments are realized.The government plans to create 100 million new factory jobs by 2022 and increase manufacturing’s share in the economy to 25% during the next six years. That India is open to international business and willing to remove all regulatory hurdles to embrace foreign capital has become a clarion call of Modi and his finance minister almost on a daily basis. But, in one area, the Make in India programme is yet to generate positive results. This is the area of “inci-dence and location of innovation”, which is a pre-requisite for generating new knowledge in science and technology.

First woman space traveller to take internet to rural India through TV

Anousheh Ansari, who had in September 2006 grabbed headlines for becoming the first woman space traveller, is now dreaming of connecting rural

India with the internet via television screens. The Iranian-American entrepreneur, who is working with Tata Trust to help the rural areas in three districts of Rajasthan get access to select content on the internet using their TV sets through an innovative technology developed by her com-pany Prodea Systems, is now planning to expand it across the state before taking it pan-India.Ansari says the idea to use the television screen to provide interactive digital services to rural people came to her almost one-and-a-half years ago when she visited a few villages in Rajasthan. She found most of the villages had access to 3G network, but people didn’t have access to inter-net as they felt it was either too complicated or they didn’t have the right device to access it.

INNOVaTION

Shame that so many yrs after independence, no big innovation in India: Power Min

Power Minister Piyush Goyal has rued that it is a “shame” that even more than 60 years after Independence, the coun-try has not come up with significant innovation even as 25

union ministries entered into an ambitious pact to carry out re-search in collaboration with IITs and IIScs at an event here.

“It’s a matter of shame for us that so many years after indepen-dence, India hasn’t really come up with any huge innovation or significant substance for which we can feel proud in the world as our own contribution to science, technology and human develop-ment,” Goyal said.

He was speaking at an event where an MoU under Modi gov-ernment’s IMPRINT initiative was signed by 25 Ministries in 10 fields ranging from healthcare, defence, nano technology, com-munications, manufacturing environment etc.

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Coupled with an ever-growing population, the food crisis is assuming alarming proportions in the country. agri is undergoing a structural change.The relative input of agriculture to the gDP has been declining. The performance of agriculture by crop categories also clearly indicates the slowing down process of agriculture in india. Rural Connect Team assesses the grave issues of agri sector

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Deepening FARM CRISISThe commencement of deceleration

in agriculture began from early nineties and it became sharp from the late nineties. The trends in the

area, input use, capital stock and technology also reflect the agricultural downfall and the farmer’s response accordingly. It is alarming that India is moving towards a point of no re-turn, from being a self-reliant nation of food surplus to a net importer of food. All these trends indicate that the agricultural sector in India is facing a crisis today. It is argued that the root cause of the crisis was that agriculture is no more a profitable economic activity when compared to other enterprises. It means that the income derived from these activities is not sufficient enough to meet the expenditure of the cultivators. And therefore, unless agricul-ture is made a profitable enterprise, the pres-ent crisis cannot be solved. The related factors responsible for the crisis include: dependence on rainfall and climate, liberal import of ag-ricultural products, reduction in agricultural subsidies, lack of easy credit to agriculture and dependence on money lenders, decline in gov-ernment investment in the agricultural sector and conversion of agricultural land for alter-native uses. It is argued that the consequence of agricultural crisis in India is very vast and likely to hit all the other sectors and the na-tional economy in several ways. In specific, it has adverse effects on food supply, prices of foodgrains, cost of living, health and nutrition, poverty, employment, labour market, land loss

from agriculture and foreign exchange earn-ings. In sum, it revealed that the agricultural crisis would be affecting a majority of the people in India and the economy as a whole in the long run. And therefore, it can be argued that the crisis in agriculture is a crisis of the country as a whole.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTAgriculture plays a crucial role in growth

and development of a country’s economy. Be-sides providing food to nation, agriculture re-leases labour, provides saving, contributes to market of industrial goods and earns foreign exchange. Agricultural development is an in-tegral part of overall economic development. In India, agriculture was the main source of national income and occupation at the time of Independence. Agriculture and allied activi-ties contributed nearly 50 per cent to India’s national income. Around 72 percent of total working population was engaged in agricul-ture. These confirm that Indian economy was a backward and agricultural based economy at the time of Independence.

After the institution of planning in India, the share of agriculture has persistently de-clined on account of the development of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. From 55.3 per cent in 1950-51, the share of Agriculture and allied activities in GDP at fac-tor cost declined to 37.9 per cent in 1980-81. The share of agriculture and allied activities in GDP at factor cost was 14.6 per cent in 2009-


10. In 1951, 69.5 per cent of the working popu-lation was engaged in agriculture. This percent-age fell to 66.9 per cent in 1991 and to 56.7 per cent in 2001. In 2004-05, agriculture provided employment to 52.1 per cent of the work force. However, with rapid increase in population the absolute number of people engaged in agricul-ture has become exceedingly large.

Agriculture provides raw materials to vari-ous industries of national importance. For a number of years the three agriculture - based of India- cotton textile, jute and tea- accounted for more than 50 percent of export earnings of the country. The share of agriculture in total exports rose to around 70 percent to 75 percent. With economic progress and consequent diversifica-tion of production base, the share of agricultur-al goods in total exports has consistently fallen. For instance, the share of agricultural exports in total exports was 44.2 percent in 1960-61. This fell consistently to 30.7 percent in 1980-81 and 9.9 percent in 2009-10

FOOD SECURITY POLICYOptimum food grain production is most im-

portant need of the peoples in each nation. It is essential part of food security policy of the country. Recently government has providing facilities to the food grain growers in India. Be-cause of government support food grain pro-duction in India is increasing gradually. As far as food grains output in concerned, the total

production increased from 50.8 million tonnes in 1950-51 to 187.0 million tonnes in the Eighth Plan and further to 202.9 million tonnes in the Ninth Plan. The Food grain output in the Tenth Plan was 202.2 million tonnes even less than the annual average recorded in the Ninth Plan. However, according to the Third Advance Es-timates for the year 2010-11 released on April, 2011, the food grains production rose to the record production of 235.9 million tonnes in this year.

FEAR OF DROUGHTFor a country like India where agriculture

contributes 18 per cent of the gross domestic product, but is a source of income to over two-thirds of the nation’s 1.1 billion population, drought is an evil word.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has de-clared that nearly half of India, i.e. over 250 of the country’s nearly 600 districts have been hit by drought.

This was the situation in the middle of Au-gust and the Indian Meteorological Department warned that the south-west monsoon would withdraw early this year. This warning, cou-pled with the fact that skies continue to remain sunny across most parts of India, especially in the north, shows the situation is only going to get worse and ‘half of India drought-hit’ might prove to be an understatement by then.

As per official figures, the monsoon season this year has brought 29 per cent less rainfall than normal. The agriculture minister has of-ficially declared that a weak monsoon is going to hit the kharif season crop badly, with the pro-duction of rice expected to decline by a stag-gering 10 million tonnes this year. The country had produced nearly 100 million tonnes of rice during 2008-2009, according to official figures.

“Due to the expected reduced production of rice, there could be pressure on availability and market price,” Pawar warned. To tackle the crisis, the government has already said it would sell wheat and rice from its godowns in the open market to keep prices under tab.

Another fallout of the drought situation is the rising number of suicides among farmers. Within days of the minister announcing that nearly half of the country was drought-hit, au-thorities in Andhra Pradesh were investigating

The rate of growth of agricultural output is gradually declining in the recent years. The relative input of agriculture to the gDP has been declining over time increasingly

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whether this was the reason behind the suicides of 20 farmers. For India, a failed monsoon is nothing short of a natural calamity. The rains that the southwest monsoon brings are crucial to India’s economy, as agriculture accounts for a sixth of the country’s GDP.

Nearly 60 per cent of India`s farmers depend on rains for irrigation and a failed monsoon means crops such as rice, soyabean, sugarcane and cotton take a severe hit. To cushion the farmers against an expected fall in production, the government has hiked the minimum sup-port price for paddy and pulses by Rs 100 and up to Rs 240 per quintal, respectively.

While both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia have tried to allay fears of an adverse fallout of a weak monsoon, the situation on the ground is alarm-ing. Food prices are already at historic highs. Whether it is vegetable or pulses, the prices of some of the commodities have increased more than 300 per cent compared to last year.

It is only an irony that the inflation is in the negative at a time when most of India (read poor and middle class) has begun to exercise the option of not choosing to eat the ‘luxurious’ vegetables and pulses.

BETTER IRRIGATION FACILITIESThis year’s drought, like in the past cases,

serves us with one simple warning – that we need to improve our irrigation facilities and re-duce our dependence on monsoon rains.

Even the International Water Management Institute has warned in a recent report that countries in Asia need to update their run-down irrigation systems if they wish to meet the challenge of feeding an extra 1.5 billion people by 2050. And it is not a hidden fact that India is going to have the biggest share of these ad-ditional numbers.

The issue of food wastage is central to In-dia’s efforts in combating hunger and improv-ing food security. While focus has been on improving production, reducing food supply chain losses remains a relatively unaddressed problem till very recently.

It is hard to put a figure to how much food is lost and wasted in India today due to lack of adequate infrastructure, however, a 2011 report by a UN body, FAO, puts wastage in fruits and vegetables as high as 45 per cent of produce (post-harvest to distribution) for developing Asian countries like India.

SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUESHow food gets from farmers’ fields all over

India to the plates of the country’s 1.2 billion people. What struck us most is the level of fragmentation across the supply chain, which hinders the country’s ability to plan and quickly make adjustments to the system when neces-sary. These challenges, coupled with the impor-tance of India’s agricultural sector in feeding the population, have compelled the government to step in and regulate parts of the system. Some-times this is a good thing – government pro-

The drought like situation, similar to that of past few years, serves us with one simple warning – that we need to improve our irrigation facilities and reduce our dependence on monsoon rains or else doom days are not far off

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grams provide food for millions of low-income families – however, these government programs can also be extraordinarily inefficient and wasteful, which we’ll discuss at length in later posts. In the meantime, we thought we’d share a brief overview of how the system works, which will hopefully provide some useful context for subsequent entries.

How food gets from farmers’ fields all over India to the plates of the country’s 1.2 billion people. What struck us most is the level of fragmentation across the supply chain, which hinders the country’s ability to plan and quickly make adjustments to the system when neces-sary. These challenges, coupled with the impor-tance of India’s agricultural sector in feeding the population, have compelled the government to step in and regulate parts of the system. Some-times this is a good thing – government pro-grams provide food for millions of low-income families – however, these government programs can also be extraordinarily inefficient and wasteful, which we’ll discuss at length in later posts. In the meantime, we thought we’d share a brief overview of how the system works, which will hopefully provide some useful context for subsequent entries.

There are two main types of agricultural supply chains in India – one which is highly-regulated by the government and another that is run by the private sector. In the 1960s, due to concerns over food security, the Indian gov-

ernment created special rules for five key ag-ricultural products – wheat, rice, pulses, sugar and edible oils. Wheat is managed particularly closely as it serves as the majority of the gov-ernment’s 55 million ton safety stock of food. Other products, such as fruits and vegetables, are generally unregulated and are handled al-most entirely by the private sector. Both chains, not surprisingly, start on the farm.

Nearly all farmers sell their produce in gov-ernment controlled markets, which are often just a few kilometers up the street from the farms. The transactions are handled predomi-nantly by Commission Agents who negoti-ate prices with the farmers. The Commission Agents don’t own the produce at any point, but rather find a buyer, usually the government or a produce trader, and then charge a percentage commission which generally ranges from 2.5-6 per cent of the transaction value.

The Commission Agents also often provide financing for the farmer throughout the grow-ing period. This financing structure is particu-larly important because most farmers can’t get credit in excess of the value of their next har-vest. Since most farmers have so little land, this means they can rarely afford to make invest-ments that will increase efficiency and reduce waste. At this point the supply chain splits be-tween the government and the private sector. If the government is buying a regulated crop, the Food Corporation of India will transact with

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all farmers sell their produce in govt controlled markets, which are often just a few kms up the street from the farms. The transactions are usually handled by Commission agents who negotiate prices

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the Commission Agent at a regulated mini-mum support price. The Food Corporation of India, a government body, is by far the larg-est purchaser of wheat, as well as many of the other key agricultural products, which it stores and distributes to impoverished populations through the Public Distribution System. Most of the regulated produce is grown in Punjab and Haryana and moved by truck or train to the rest of the country. The Public Distribu-tion System operates nearly half a million retail markets where government ration cards must be presented to receive subsidised food.

The private sector supply chain, which moves mostly fruits and vegetables, has tra-ditionally been much more local and highly fragmented, especially on the retail side. The movement of a product from a farm to a mar-ket often involves 4-5 middlemen. The Com-mission Agents generally sell to one or more traders who arrange for the produce to be shipped to city wholesale markets. Once there, it is sold yet again to local retailers, who then sell the produce to consumers. Due to the lack of cold storage mentioned in the prior post, any disruption of this sequence can result in tons of food spoiling.

The recent emergence of larger food compa-nies, often headquartered in other countries, is

beginning to change this through direct pur-chases from farmers as well as investment in modern processing and logistics. However, these participants still play a minor role in the overall supply chain, as the government lim-its and regulates foreign direct investment in India.

GOVERNMENT’S ROLEIn India, a large part of the agri supply

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chain ecosystem is either in the public sector, or strongly linked to it. The Indian government attempts to insulate the cultivator from price fluctuations by procuring their produce at Min-imum Support Prices (MSPs), decided by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices after analysing the costs of growing a particu-lar crop. The 7500+ Agricultural Procurement and Marketing Committee (APMC) mandis provide a marketplace for the transaction and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) plays the role of the buyer, storing the procured produce in the relevant warehousing corporation’s ware-house. Ultimately, this gets distributed through the Public Distribution System (PDS) shops and reaches the consumer. For non-MSP crops, the producer is dependent on the traditional private channels to market her produce.

Agriculture is a ‘state subject’ and a large part of investment as well as regulatory progress is happening at the state level. Till very recently, regulatory barriers had constrained the devel-opment of storage and processing infrastructure but measures like inclusion of agri-warehousing under priority sector lending by RBI, subsidy schemes, tax incentives and the Warehousing Act (which will promote negotiability of ware-housing receipts) have helped private players take an active interest in the same. The Private Entrepreneur Guarantee Scheme is one such initiative to incentivise private investment for construction of warehouses by private entrepre-neurs, with an FCI guarantee to hire them for 10 years, assuring a fair return on investment by

the entrepreneur.THE WAY OUTS

The only remedy to the crisis is to do all that is possible to make agriculture a profitable en-terprise and attract the farmers to continue the crop production activities. As an effort towards this direction, the government should augment its investment and expenditure in the farm sector. Investment in agriculture and its allied sectors, including irrigation, transport, commu-nication, rural market, rural infrastructure and farm research, should be drastically increased, and the government should aim at integrated development of the rural areas. The solution of the problem is not in a few ‘packages’ but in drastic changes in the present economic policies related to agriculture. No other sec-tor’s growth and development must be at the cost of agriculture. All farmers, agricultural la-bourers, societies, government and people’s or-ganisations should work collectively to revive agriculture and ‘Save India from Agriculture Crisis’ as agriculture is not simply a question of survival, it’s not a question of subsistence ag-riculture or helping the poor farmers. It`s an exciting way of changing the world. It`s a part of the total philosophy of how the world should be. Food became a very uninteresting sub-ject. It was neglected for years and now we`re suffering for that.

And if we continue to ignore agriculture and fail to make farmers a priority in the gov-ernmental policies, God save the world from this crisis.

Regulatory barriers had constrained the development of storage & processing infrastructure but measures like inclusion of warehousing under priority sector has helped in lending by RBi, subsidy schemes, and tax incentives

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INEFFICIENT PRICE SIGNALS: The govern-ment has been buying almost one-third of all rice and wheat produced in India through the PDS sys-tem, but in other kinds of grains, fruits and veg-etables (both being highly perishable), the role of the government is limited. This leads to MSPs be-ing ineffective as both price signals and as insula-tors from the perspective of the larger agricultural population.

LIMITED REACH OF MANDIS: Also, this pro-curement system has failed to cover the entire country evenly (back of the envelope calculation suggests that on an average, a farmer needs to travel 12 kms to reach the nearest mandi and more than 50 kms in NE India) while according to the recommendations by National Farmers Commis-sion, availability of markets should be within a 5 km radius.

TOO MANY INTERMEDIARIES, INFOR-MATION ASYMMETRY: The above mentioned problems have led to formation of long market-ing channels, with multiple intermediaries, add-ing to the woes of the producers of perishable agri goods. These intermediaries have led to a cost inflation of ~250 per cent (over the cost of pro-duction) and have exacerbated the existing infor-mation asymmetries in agriculture, especially for non-MSP crops.

INADEqUATE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR STORAGE: The Planning Commission has re-cently estimated the gap between agri-warehousing supply and demand at 35 mn MT. Currently, public sector agencies like the FCI, Central Warehousing Corporations (CWC) and the various State Ware-housing Corporations (SWC) have a storage ca-pacity of 71 mn MT, while the private sector has close to 25 mn MT. To put the scarcity in perspec-tive, food grain stocks held only by the government was 80 mn MT last year (peak) according to the FCI annual report.

SKEWED DISTRIBUTION OF CAPACITY: Skewed distribution of this capacity is another is-sue, with North India having access to 60 per cent of the total storage infrastructure. The Planning Commission has recently estimated the gap be-tween agri-warehousing supply and demand at 35 mn MT.

LACK OF COLD STORAGE INFRASTRUC-TURE: India’s current cold storage capacity at 25 MT is barely sufficient for 10 per cent of fruit and vegetables produced in the country.LACK OF COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT OP-TIONS: Collateral management refers to financing of agricultural goods stored at warehouses, and is estimated to be a ~Rs 3,500 Cr opportunity by in-dustry sources.

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The DISPARITIES

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Osmosis is a natural process, in which a semiperme-able membrane separates two solutions with dif-ferent concentrations of a solute, the solvent has a tendency to move from low to high solute concentra-

tions for chemical potential equilibration.In human society, the concentration is all about economics.

Low solute concentration is basically low socio-economic condi-tions and opportunities and similarly, high concentration is big-ger & higher opportunities. This semipermeable membrane is the distance, the distance between two economic zones of higher & lower opportunities & amenities. People run from lower op-portunities area to higher opportunities area, and that’s natural.

These two areas in today’s world are primarily rural & urban.

Reverse OsmosisNow, let’s come to the concept of RO – Reverse Osmosis. Reverse osmosis is the process of forcing a solvent from a

region of high solute concentration through a semipermeable membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. The largest and most important application of reverse osmosis is the separation of pure water from seawater.

The question in the case of human beings is to understand, how do we generate that pressure, which is higher than the natu-ral osmotic pressure of leaving a low opportunity area for a high-er opportunity area.

RECESS – The Human

RO PLANTmadhular Swayambhu compares human migration with reverse osmosis. He says how do we generate that pressure, which is higher than the natural osmotic pressure of leaving a low opportunity area for a higher opportunity area

tataV GYaN

tataV GYaN

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Human NatureThe answer is to first understand

the human nature, value system and affinities, basically a SWOT of hu-man beings, and here we aren’t talk-ing of exceptions, it’s generalized viewpoint. By default, human beings are fun loving, emotional and home-sick people, who would love to be at ease and would like to lead a com-fortable life, with good amenities for earning, health, education and recreation. If all these are available at their natural habitat, they’ll by and large be contented and wouldn’t like to take pain for moving to another dwelling place with higher oppor-tunities, unless the natural resource for earning, education, health, live-lihood, sanitation & recreation de-plete to an unsustainable level.

Now the above understanding, leads us to the second BIG question of economics. How much it cost to build the infrastructure in the natu-ral habitat of the human beings – the villages. Let’s take India as an exam-ple. Why India – is because, for any social survey, the best sampling pos-sible is in India. We get all samples of social-economic, multi cultural diversity here.

The Indian Example So let’s take a closer look, in In-

dia we have about 6,38,000 villages, about 1610 cities and a plan to build 100 smart cities, with a whopping budget of INR 48000 Crores, which means about 480 Crores per city.

About 68.84% population is in villages. This means 860500000 people out of a total of 1250000000, reside in villages. Taking an average here, would mean roughly about 1348 people reside in a village. A usual Indian family has 3-5 mem-bers, with at least one kid. Taking this as sample figure for academic

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purpose, what we get is 269 families and about 250-300 kids.

Economically, it’ll be exponentially cheap to build a school, a college, a hospital or even a stadium for 1348 people in 269 families, wherein in real estate is in abundance, fresh air, fresh water and all natural amenities are in abundance, compared to a city wherein the population is in millions, structures are already built, all brownfield, air pollution, water pollu-tion, plastic waste is a part of routine life. Real estate cost is skyrocketing, natural resources are depleting, and all costs are very high.

So where’s the catch?The catch is not the natural resources, but

the man-made resources. School, college, hos-pital, stadium, mall, hotel, all can be built, but the issue would be to make teachers, doctors, lecturers, coaches, engineers, available in the villages to teach, educate, medicate, cure, coach and maintain them. Those who are capable do not want to go to the villages, and those in vil-lages aren’t equipped enough. Those who are from villages and get capable get settled in cit-ies and don’t come back, as the economic op-

portunities are higher in cities, for the skills they have acquired.

But we have a good part as well, India an-nually produces, 50K MBBS doctors, about 0.7 million medical practitioners in alternative therapies under AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopa-thy) and about 1 million engineers per year, as per the details published by various newspa-pers and government agencies. Annual Survey repot on higher education by MHRD of India says 28.56 million graduates with bachelors de-

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gree are produced every year in India from 642 Universities, 34908 colleges and 11356 Stand Alone Institutions across the country. With so much of student power in the country, why should we be wasting them in politics, why not make social entrepreneurs out of them? We have countries with a mandate for all citizen to undergo military training, then we can’t we have a mandate for rural development? At least it isn’t as tough as military training. We have student unions in every college & university, but no avenues for rural rejuvenation in any of them.

ResourcesNow that means, we have manpower avail-

able in abundance, which is skilled and not ev-eryone gets settled with a job by doing gradu-ation. As a matter of fact, there’s a mandate by MCI (Medical Council of India), that every MBBS has to work in rural area for minimum 2 years before attaining a license to practice, its like an internship, but the same isn’t applicable to rest of the streams.

Also, as per the data from DGR (Director General Resettlement) website of the Armed Forces, Ministry of Defense, every year 60,000 trained professionals of the Indian Armed Forces, are released / retired at relatively young age of 42. These are trained combat profession-als capable in various fields, who can work as life coach for the village community.

Tech SaviourAnd now comes the last mile – the ameni-

ties & facilities, for which information tech-nology comes as a savior. In this information age, with advent of Internet, the World has become flat. There are smart phones, broad-band, wireless and VSATs to cover the vil-lages for getting connected to the world. The hospitals /primary health care centers can be connected to super specialty hospital via tele-medicine, schools & Colleges can have dis-tance education via e-classrooms, cinemas can have movies released over remote telecast, vil-lage festivals, performances can be telecasted over YouTube, artisans can have their own e-commerce portals to sell, agri produce could be sold over e-mandis, so on and so forth.

So how do we execute this?Re-establishing Cultural & Economic Self-

Sufficiency (RECESS) Program for villagesRE-CESS, as the name suggests, its taking a break from the rat race or urbanization. It’s a pro-gram for vacation from the urban traumatic stressful unhealthy life style. Its rejuvenation of human capital, human values, ethos of hu-manity, It’s the back to village program. A pro-gram to re-establish the self- sustaining rural economy and cultural values.

Government has to come up with a man-date, for all graduates to serve the vil-lages for minimum 3 years.

The retirement of all Armed Forces Pro-fessionals shall get increased by 3 years and the cadre for last 3 years of service shall be rural development.

Funds shall be allocated from the MLA & MP local development funds.

Construction can be done by various PWDs in every state.

Instead of working in smart cities, we can build smarter villages and the revolution would take over the entire development plan for the country for the grass root levels.

With an Army man as the project offi-cer, the entire project shall be running in mission mode and the scenario would change in just a few years. So all is possi-ble, with a little political will, a few man-dates and a lot of courage to sail against the tide for a brighter future.

now comes the last mile – the amenities and facilities, for which information technology comes as a savior. in this information age, with advent of internet, the World has become flat

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A gateway to the countryside... wake up to the dawn chorus, inhale your fill of pure country air, discov-er the tranquil countryside, spot a squirrel forag-ing for nuts...”

The growth in the India rural tourism market in recent years means that many Indian villages have now found a place on the tourist map. Not only does it provide the villagers with a much needed additional source of income, visitors are able to interact with them and gain a rare insight into their way of life. Here are some unique ways of experiencing rural India.

EARTHY ENDEAVOURSIn a land of 7 billion villages and 330 million Gods, there

is more off the map than there is on it. But slowly and surely, rural tourism initiatives in India are connecting the present to the past, the avenues to the gallis, and people to people, mak-ing history, culture, craft and tradition relevant in a contem-

Slowly and surely, rural tourism initiatives in india are connecting the present to the past, the avenues to the gallis, and people to people, making history, culture, craft and tradition relevant in a contemporary context. Reports Ratnesh anand

Village tourism

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Rural linking Hinterlands aPRil 2016 33www.ruralconnect.in

porary context.Whether through milking a goat,

ploughing a field, harvesting rice, learning a few horse riding strokes, building a greenhouse, watching fire-flies outshine each other in the mating game, or simply sleeping under the stars, rural tourism initiatives are not just giving city-slickers a taste of life on the other side of the farm hedge; they are creating sustainable eco-sys-tems, which provide alternate sources of income for village dwellers without straining their existing resources.

How would one feel about wak-ing up in a nursery rhyme, complete with crowing cockerels and lowing

cattle? Would he rub the remnants of your dreams out of your eyes and walk down the dirt road to try your hand at milking a goat? Or perhaps, chopping wood? Or maybe, you would prefer an early morning dive into the river nearby? Is that your rumbling tummy demanding your attention?

Perhaps, one would better follow the aroma of that sumptuous makke di roti and sarso da saag, cooked on a wood-fire, and help themselves. Friendly people, seasonal food... this is the village life for you. You could knock a few mangoes down from the trees, try your hand at ploughing the field or come back later in the year,

during harvest season to listen to the story of rice.

ROUSING THE SPIRITSOrganic farming, along with specific

sporting opportunity, Sportsland Farm in Noida, on the periphery of National Capital city of Delhi offers an umpteen opportunity for any aficionado towards spending a quality time in terms of ru-ral life, which is rare in general terms for urban inhabitants.

Sportsland Farm offers a unique ex-perience of living through an earthy living, playing games of your choice and have the real life experiences. There’s an organic farm, where one can

eat the produce of the land or locally sourced ingredients.

“Right from sporting events from crick-eting, football, volleyball, pool, table tennis, horse-riding and others to farm activities like milk the cows, feed the horses, chicks, cooling off in the tube wells, etc. we creates an environ-ment for everyone from kids to grownups,” describes Kushal Rathi, founder and owner of Sportsland Farm.

AGRI-TOURISMRathi explains that the concept is not new.

“A growing number of farmers across the country are turning entrepreneurs and earning big bucks from something they offered free to friends and relatives - a healthy and relaxing weekend to unwind in lush green farms, drive a tractor, ride a bullock cart, milk a cow and

pluck fresh fruit from orchards,” he says.Farm tourism, once a small niche, is ex-

panding rapidly and getting a big push from the tourism ministry. Tour operators, includ-ing some who were farmers to begin with, are aggressively pushing farm tourism in India and abroad. They are attracting tourists from states like Punjab, Haryana, UP, Maharashtra, Him-achal Pradesh, Uttrakhand and some others.

And tourists are mostly from the metros, who are lapping it up, helping the niche seg-ment expand nationally, and going far beyond its beginnings in farmlands and old bungalows.

In the other parts too, the craze is fast catch-ing up. “There are parents from Mumbai and Pune who want their children to see that milk actually comes from cows and buffaloes and not from factories. For a farmer, it is a daily grind but for a tourist, it is a great experience,” said Baramati-based Pandurang Taware, who won the 2012 national tourism award for best responsible tourism project of India.

His venture, Agri Tourism Development Corp, clocked a turnover of Rs 1 crore with a net profit of Rs 25 lakh.

It was in 2005 he realised the huge poten-tial of his ancestral 30-acre farm land. “People thought I was crazy, but I knew that if Indians travel to Florence and Naples to enjoy the farm experience, they will do so in India too,” he said.

NEW CONCEPTS

Today, he conducts training sessions for bu-reaucrats from states like Bihar and is involving other farmers in the business. For farmers, it is not only a brand new source of income, but also much easier than planting and harvest-ing crops. The new income comes without the frustrations of irregular weather, volatile prices and fear of droughts, pests and plant disease.

Rustic experience comes as a complete package. The traveler gets to ride bullock carts and horses, milk cows or goats, sow, plough and harvest, bathe at a tube well, climb trees and pluck fruits. They can watch the making of jaggery or rearing of silkworm and enjoy tradi-tional food and folk arts show.

Harkirat Ahluwalia of Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, who offers farm holidays in luxury tents at 8,000 a day per person, said that people were ready to loosen their purse strings for a quality experience.

How would one feel about wak-ing up in a nursery rhyme, com-plete with crowing cockerels and lowing cattle?


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He bought the first luxury tent in 2008 and now has nine tents on his 40-acre farm complete with all modern facilities. "There is a growing percentage of repeat tourists who come to visit us. It is enabling us to expand our services - from providing yoga services to cooking classes of Punjabi dishes," said Ahlu-walia.

Down south, estates like Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (erstwhile Tata Tea) and Wood-briar Group of Coimbatore feel tourism can be a good source of income earner in the long term. Kerala government's recent decision to permit the use of 5 per cent of plantation land for tourism and allied activities has inspired farmers to diversify. With 23,000 hectares of tea plantations spread over the Munnar high ranges in Kerala, the Kanan Devan is the larg-est tea corporate in south India with produc-tion over 20 million kg. The company plans to invest around Rs 100 crore in the next two to three years to give thrust to tourism.

GOVERNMENT'S INITIATIVESTourism growth potential can be harnessed

as a strategy for Rural Development. The de-velopment of a strong platform around the concept of Rural Tourism is definitely useful for a country like India, where almost 74% of the population resides in its 7 million villages. Across the world the trends of industrializa-tion and development have had an urban cen-tric approach. Alongside, the stresses of Urban lifestyles have led to a “counter-urbanisation” syndrome. This has led to growing interest in the rural areas. At the same time this trend of urbanization has led to falling income levels, lesser job opportunities in the total areas lead-ing to an urbanization syndrome in the rural areas. Rural Tourism is one of the few activities which can provide a solution to these problems. Besides, there are other factors which are shift-ing the trend towards rural tourism like increasing levels of awareness, growing interest in heritage and culture and im-proved accessibility, and environmental consciousness. In the developed coun-tries, this has resulted in a new style of tourism of visiting village settings to ex-perience and live a relaxed and healthy lifestyle. This concept has taken the

shape of a formal kind of Rural Tourism.Under this Scheme, thrust will be to pro-

mote village tourism as the primary tourism product to spread tourism and its socio-eco-nomic benefits to rural and its new geographic regions. Key geographic regions would be identified for development and promotion of Rural Tourism. The implementation would be done through a Convergence Committee headed by the District Collector. Activities like improving the environment, hygiene, in-frastructure etc. would be eligible for assis-tance. Apart from providing financial assis-tance the focus would be to tap the resources available under different schemes of depart-ment of rural development, state government and other concerned departments of the government of India.

Development of a strong platform around the con-cept of Rural Tourism is definitely useful for a coun-try like india, where almost 74% of the population re-sides in its 7 mn villages



While much has been written about the Wheat Revolution, popularly called the Green Revolution, the elements of in-

formation sharing through innovative commu-nication strategies and social mobilization are rarely discussed. As MS Swaminathan notes, the yield revolution was only possible because the farmers were not merely conscientised, but could clearly see the benefits of the new tech-nologies to themselves. Much before the debate on ‘participatory development’ began to be promoted by international agencies, he felt the need to engage with farmers in the villages, if a real difference was to be made. Working with the people, and community empowerment were part of Gandhiji’s philosophy, which he had internalised early on.

Once we received the initial wheat genetic material from Norman Borlaug, a wheat breed-er at CIMMYT, Mexico (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970) in September 1963, it was clear to me that with this material a yield breakthrough was possible. Every year PL 480 wheat was being received under very humili-

ating circumstances. It normally takes around 10 years to develop a variety, have trials and spread the information through extension agents. I wanted to use this opportunity to ‘purchase time’, to leapfrog in terms of spread-ing the new varieties. I scientifically work, we start a National Demonstration Programme in small farmers’ fields, because anything demon-strated in rich farmers’ fields would be attrib-uted to affluence and not to technology. This was driven by experience in 1958, where bri-gades of scientists went to the farmers’ fields for three to four months to check the acceptability of a pest-resistant variety. The Ministry wanted to demonstrate in progressive farmer fields; these were rich farmers who would give them tea when they went there. My proposal was not approved.

Fortunately, in August 1964, C Subrama-niam became agriculture minister under Lal Bahadur Shastri’s Prime Ministership. He had great faith in science. So he told Dr.Pal, the then director of IARI, that he wanted to meet his team of scientists. 15 or 20 of us met CS. He was very democratic, went from person to per-

Activating fArming

mS Swaminathan, renowned for his leading role in india’s green Revolution, is well-known for his vision to rid the world of hunger and poverty. Being an advocate of moving india to sustainable development, especially using environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainable food security and the preservation of biodiversity, he is a world leader.

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Jounti Seed village was organised, all the farm-ers there took to seed production, and pro-duced 3000-4000 tonnes of seeds from 800 hectares

son. When he came to me, I mentioned that there was a great possibility of leap-frogging in production; I explained to him the potential of the dwarf wheat. I requested him to approve the National Demonstration in the fields of small and resource-poor farmers, rather than ‘progressive’ farmers, to find out their reac-tions to the new seeds. Within two days the approval came. It cost only Rs.500 per hectare and 1000 National Demonstrations were orga-nized. They were not only in wheat but also in rice, jowar, bajra and other high-yielding vari-eties. That was a turning point.

HUGE CLAMOUR FOR SEEDSThe National Demonstrations created a

huge clamour for seeds. Jounti Seed Village was organised, all the farmers there took to seed production, and produced 3000-4000 tonnes of seeds from 800 hectares. 18000 tonnes of seeds were also imported from Mex-ico to condense the time. We started in 1964 and by 1967-68, saw a major breakthrough, production rising to 17 million tonnes from 6 million at the time of Independence. From 1947-64 wheat production rose to 12 million tones, mainly due to irrigation. During 1964-68, we increased it by another 4 million tones.

I took Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, to Jounti Seed Village. But people were very pessimistic about our ability to overcome the ‘PL480 syndrome.’ To change defeatist atti-tudes, she agreed to my suggestion to release a postal stamp on the Wheat Revolution, and it was done in 1968.

Unfortunately CS got defeated in the 1967 elections, but the support given to pricing policy by Jagjivan Ram, the next minister, was timely. Farmers will be enthusiastic about in-creasing yields only if they get decent prices for the surplus. Those three years, 1964-67, were critical in terms of political support in whatever we wanted – import of seeds, Na-tional Demonstrations. Otherwise we would still have made the breakthrough, but it would have taken longer. So, the 1960s was a very ex-citing period. Many authorities referred to In-dia as living from ‘ship to mouth’. We were able to change that. It was amazing, because people never thought it was possible.

ONSET OF KRISHI DARSHANApart from demonstrations, it was impor-

tant to share the information widely. In 1966, after Homi’s Bhabha’s death in an air crash, Vi-kram Sarabhai succeeded him as chairman of

Currently, the public expendi-ture on ag-ricultural research is only 0.7 per cent of the agricultural gDP

the Atomic Energy Commission. He was inter-ested in the communication between scientist and the field and wanted to use the space pro-gramme to facilitate this. Vikram and I went to many villages. He was excited by what he saw in the fields, and wanted to share this informa-tion with Indira Gandhi. In those days it was not difficult to meet the Prime Minister, and he knew he very closely as Ambala Sarabha’s fam-ily was one of the leading industrial families to support the freedom struggle. So we went to her house. ‘We must start Krishi Darshan on televi-sion. You have to inaugurate the programme’, he told her. We were discussing this in the month of December, and Indira gave the order to start Krishi Darshan immediately, she would inaugurate it on Republic Day. The bureaucrats came running to IARI the next day with a host of questions – how do we make films, where are the cameras, where are the villagers, how to shoot, etc? Vikram Sarabhai was very generous and donated money for 200 TV sets from the Nehru Foundation. I asked the IARI Extension Division to take the cameramen to the villages, and help them shoot films. Krishi Darshan was inaugurated on January 26th. Many thousands of farmers had gathered in her house, and she told them about the new opportunities. Kri-shi Darshan slowly grew popular and became a household word.

The next step was to make farmers enthu-siastic about the increased yields. Two things were necessary: if the produce increases, there must be a market for it at a fairly decent price. That is why the Prices Commission and Food

Corporation of India were set up to purchase grain at reasonable prices. The decisions taken by C Subramaniam and Jagjivan Ram were helpful. Unfortunately, at the other end, post-harvest technology including storage and dis-tribution, has been neglected, even till today. In my five-year programme for spreading dwarf wheat (1963-68), I had suggested proper silos for storage. Morarji Desai called a meeting in IARI to discuss my note on storage, but the government, did not do much. Farmers have two problems – seeds and markets. Both have to be solved, otherwise there us a problem, es-pecially for small farmers.

(This column is based on MS Swaminathan's conversation with Nitya Rao)


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Due to basically religious restrictions, veg-etarianism is widespread in India. However, very few Indians follow a vegan diet in which all animal products are avoided. Milk and oth-er dairy products, derived from both cows and buffalos, are avidly consumed across a large portion of the country. Indeed, India is the largest milk producer in the world by a good margin, having recently surpassed the entire European Union, and Pakistan ranks fourth. Milk is India’s leading agricultural commod-ity, produced on some 75 million dairy farms, most of which are quite small. Beginning in 1970, the Indian government provided high levels of support for the dairy industry through its “Operation Flood,” which doubled per capi-ta milk consumption in last 45-year period.

CONSUMPTION PATTERNBut milk drinking and the consumption of

other dairy products is by no means uniformly distributed across India. Instead, as the maps posted here indicate, the country has a strong longitudinal gradient in this regard. Milk drinking is pronounced in the northwest but is relatively rare in the northeast, with per capita consumption on the state-level varying by well more than an order of magnitude. The same pattern is found on the maps of both urban and rural consumption. The only major difference between the two is the fact that urban dwellers, being wealthier on average, tend to drink more milk than rural dwellers.

At one level, the east and west dairy dispar-ity in India is easily explained on a genetic ba-

Dairy neeDsindia has transformed from a country of acute milk shortage to the world’s leading milk producer due to government initiative known as Operation Flood from 1970 to 90s. However, the growth has slumped to less than 3 percent in recent years, raising cause for concern. The


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in 2008, when the demand for houses in the higher-end segment was falling down, the focus turned to the affordable housing for low-income groups

sis. In northwestern India, the vast majority of people are lactose tolerant, and hence can drink milk without digestive problems into adulthood. In eastern India, on the other hand, most adults are lactose intolerant. Some dairy products, however, are generally digestible by those with lactose intolerance; this is particu-larly the case with ghee, or clarified butter, an essential component of many Indian dishes.

Lactose tolerance in western India may be connected to the Bronze-Age movement of Indo-European-speaking people into South Asia. Although lactose tolerance has evolved separately in at least four different areas of the world, it appears that Europeans and Indians share the same genes that allow milk digestion into adulthood.

EMERGING SITUATIONNowadays, both the private sector and the

cooperatives drive the value chains. Because of the many unsuccessful cooperatives in the country, other models of dairy farmer organi-zations are being explored, such as mutually aided cooperative societies (MACS) and pro-ducer companies.

Millions of small and marginal farmers in dairying who own two to three animals and produce an average of 5 litres comprise a criti-cal portion of India’s dairy industry. Livestock development in general and dairy develop-ment activities in particular are key compo-nents of pro-poor development strategies because livestock distribution is much more equitable than land distribution. Thus, chang-

es in the dairying environment have important implications for the smallholder farmers and for poverty reduction.

DEMAND SITUATIONDemand for dairy products in India is like-

ly to grow significantly in the coming years, driven by more consumers, higher incomes and greater interest in nutrition. Consump-tion of processed and packaged dairy products is increasing in urban areas. Because of the increasing competition from the private sec-tor, several national and international brands have entered the market and expanded con-sumers’ expectation of quality – although only among a small proportion of the population. In many parts of the country, people still pre-fer unpacked and unprocessed milk delivered by a local milkman because of its taste and the perception of freshness. The price elasticity for milk is high, thus demand for milk is very sen-sitive to price changes.

INITIATIVE IN DELHI-NCRBinsar Farms, an Indo-New Zealand joint

start up was formally inaugurated today in a simple ceremony at its dairy farm near Delhi at village Janti Khurd in Sonepat, Haryana amid chanting of holy mantras. Prof Samir Kumar Brahmachari, Former Director General of CSIR cut the ribbon at its gates.

The fresh cow milk enterprise started in the NCR by three young computer engineers Pankaj Navani (41), Deepak Raj Tushir and Sukhvinder Saraf (both 36) in collaboration

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with an experienced New Zealand dairy farm-er Mr Earl S. Rattray (58) was recently in the news when within a short span of two years, it had expanded its network to reach around 2,000 households in Delhi and adjoining areas. Its fresh milk in glass bottles has door to door distribution supply.

Many distinguished personalities including Dr Ajit Kumar, Vice-Chancellor of National Institute of Food Technology and entrepreneur Management, Ms Jane Cunliffe, New Zealand Trade Commissioner to India, Dr R.S. Khanna, Vice-Chairman of the Indian Dairy Associa-tion were among others who graced the occa-sion.

Welcoming more than 500 guests including farmers of the neighbouring areas, the Chair-man of Binsar Farms Mr.Earl Rattray, 58, one of the Founder-Directors of world’s largest milk cooperative “Fonterra”, declared the dairy farm open. He stated that the project in an idea stage five years ago has turned into a business now. According to him, their enterprise is in the de-velopment stage and its construction process still continues. Claiming to have introduced completely new concepts and new technology in the Indian Dairy industry, he asserted that they have found solutions to their problems through their own efforts. The pioneer of many dairy projects in the world maintained that Binsar Farms was challenging for him also and that it would have greater stories to tell.

Paying tributes to the growing friendship between India and New Zealand, Prof Brah-machari recalled the cricket bond between the two countries, which had now brought a dairy farm on the ground, that too in a village. He portrayed Binsar farms as the best in Data Analytics which could greatly benefit the dairy farmers in India. Addressing the gathering Dr Kumar described the opening ceremony as a cheerful event which could show up the way to thousands of youth and farmers.

Considering India as the largest producer of milk and New Zealand as its largest exporter Ms Cunliffe dubbed the milk startup as com-ing together of economies of the two coun-tries. She declared Binsar Farms as the new link between the relations of two countries. Dr Khanna described this dairy as a laboratory to associate neighbouring farmers and advised them to have their next dream as spread across their knowledge. This program had been held at time when the whole nation is refocusing its attention on rural development, the startup entrepreneurs are encouraged for job creation in the country and foreign direct investment is getting attracted to Make in India a success.

in 2008, when the demand for houses in the higher-end segment was falling down, the focus turned to the affordable housing for low-income groups

The following characterizes India’s dairy farming and its relevance to inclusive growth:Small and marginal farmers own 33 percent of land and about 60 percent of female cattle and buffaloes.Some 75 percent of rural households own, on average, two to four animals.Dairying is a part of the farming system, not a separate enterprise. Feed is mostly residual from crops, whereas cow dung is important for manure.Dairying provides a source of regular in-come, whereas income from agriculture is seasonal. This regular source of income has a huge impact on minimizing risks to income. There is some indication that areas where dairy is well developed have less inci-dence of farmer suicide.About a third of rural incomes are dependent upon dairying.Livestock is a security asset to be sold in times of crisis.

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DemanD conDitionsMarket size and growth Market growth is due to high per capita consump-

tion, increasing population and health conscious-ness

Consumption patterns Consumption of processed and packaged dairy products is increasing in urban areas

Consumption patterns Unpackaged milk is still preferred because of taste and price

Sophistication of consumers Consumer awareness on product quality is increas-ing but in a very small portion of the population

Receptivity to new products Mostly urban consumers have a very low but increasing interest in new products

Price elasticity Price elasticity is high

Impact of market opening on demand Consumers now have a variety of quality products


Innovation is the guiding trail to prog-ress, productivity and betterment of the society. It also creates employment op-portunity, better infrastructure facil-

ity and helps tackle new challenges faced by rural people at an affordable cost. India with a population of 1.28 billion is no less than in producing pathbreaking pioneers from all age group. Whether it is bunch of school kids from Karnataka, between age group of 8-12, who created ‘modified hand-cart with steering and brakes’ or 40-yr-old Mangal Singh, who inno-vated a turbine that can pump water without power and diesel. Innovation needs no science background or another Einstein but an idea to co-create things differently.

Over the time, 55 percent of people from rural India, whether it is a farmer, housewife or

innovating lifestyle

Rural innovations are extremely important since they solve rural problems by using local resources in an efficient manner. Reports anil Kumar

iNNoVatioN


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niF is one such organ-isation in india that is playing the role in, bringing patent and trade expo-sure to them

student, have evolved in expanding their skill to creating solution for their everyday shortfall with the little help available to them.

“Rural innovations are extremely important since they solve rural problems by using local resources in an efficient manner. We need high tech local solutions for rural India instead of importing them from China or US,” speaks Anil K Rajvansh, Director, Nimbkar Agri-cultural Research Institute to Rural Connect team.

Each year we miss out thousands of bright and talented innovators from rural India due to ignorance and less organisation set up at their home ground to keep a tab on such peo-ple. Now, once an innovation is done, who will take care of their patent right? Another factor terming the condition is the lack of knowledge among 45 percent rural innovators regarding patent law which is available against such cre-ations.

“One, It is difficult to get all the data on such innovators. Second, once we identify the prod-uct, it is screened for novelty, practicality, use/social applicability etc. It is then validated and if required value added, patent is filed in the name of the innovator/ knowledge provider, and business opportunities are thus explored,” says Innovation Officer Nitin Maurya, Nation-al Innovation Foundation.

TAKING UP THE CUDGELNational Innovation foundation is one such

organisation in India that is playing the role in, bringing patent and trade exposure to them. The organisation has reached about 600 dis-tricts of the country and is very keen to locate innovators from every corner. NIF believes that there would certainly be lakhs of innova-tors all around the country and they have just touched the tip of the iceberg and thousands are still yet to be identified.

Maurya says that with over 2,00,000 entries they are probably the world’s largest database of technological ideas, innovations and tradi-tional knowledge from the grassroots, not all unique or novel though.

Although, there are other organization to grant patent right and look into the interest of such innovators such as National Research De-velopment Corporation (NRDC), Intellectual Property Right India, Technology Information and Forecasting and Assessment Council (TI-FAC), CSIR.

Even though there are lakhs of brilliant innovators in India but Rural Connect team brings out its own list of innovators as per its research. Here are five of the distinctive and rural innovators, who are putting in every inch of their hard work and ideas in design-ing pathbreaking innovation and support the rural India.

Their Breakthrough (Box)1. Meet 35-yr-old Jasveer Kaur, a housewife

and farm worker from a small village called Prempura of Rajasthan, who created a multi-purpose mixer grinder which operates without electricity. She may have studied till 5th stan-dard but she is no less than any independent woman with such an exceptional innovation with such a minimal education. This grinder is a unique one because of its seven multi-functional attributes. The mixer grinder has boxes fixed to keep spices, glass to chop and grind vegetables, a looking mirror and belen and chakla attached to it. Therefore it can act as a mixer grinder, to boiling milk and roti and puri maker.

This all started two years back when one sun-ny afternoon Jasveer and other female farmers were looking for something to eat along with their plain rotis. After a long thought, all re-alised that they have only onion, tomatoes, green chilies and some salt to eat with it. All they now need is a tool to chop and grind the


Bamboo Windmill turned to be fruitful and Kutch district of gujarat in-stalled over 30 such mod-els to pump out water for salt farming

vegetable to make chutney for their rotis. And this episode inspired Jasveer to come out with a low-cost, effective and easy-to carry multi-purpose mixer grinder which needs to power to function and can chop, grind, make chapatti and puri at anywhere, anytime.

This year she was awarded by President of India, Pranab Mukherjee for her innovation at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Jasveer was very young when Polio hit her and made her left leg paralysed for life. But then nothing could de-molish her spirit and never ending ideas. Both Jasveer and her husband is victim of Polio. They have two children, son (13) and daughter (9). The family of four sometime face hardship due to dependence on their small farming.

2. It was almost the time of winter when two brothers, Mohammad Mehtar Hussain(45) and Mushtaq Ahmad (35) from Darrang district of Assam came up with an affordable and pollu-tion-free bamboo windmill to pump water for irrigation. It was the year of 2002 and both the brothers were worried about how to meet the ends of their family with no jobs in hand and meagre pension of father available to them.

They decided to begin bodo rice paddy. Bodo rice is a winter crop. It was on good de-mand in the market during that time and it

required adequate amount of water for har-vesting. Outsourcing water for the paddy field seems a big problem to them.

“It was a rough time for us and Bodo rice farming was the only viable solution to save my family from starvation. We have the land of 4 bighas but unavailability of options to draw water from 160 ft ground appears to be the biggest hurdle before our livelihood,” narrates Mushtaq Ahmad.

Unable to find any alternative to this, the two brothers decided to create a solution by themselves. They realised that the wind’s force is strong enough to draw out water if is used in an appropriate model. And then the duo de-signed the 13 ft tall ‘Bamboo Windmill’ with the help of minimum and locally available sources. They used bamboo (as it is abundant in Assam) instead of iron rod to erect the wind-mill and plastic sacks from poultry fodder to act as its blade. The manufacturing cost was Rs 5000 and it is also available at the same price.

This innovation turned to be fruitful and Kutch district of Gujarat installed over 30 such models to pump out water for salt farming. The brothers have been felicitated with national awards in the hands of former Presidents of In-dia, Dr Alam Kalam in 2005 and Pratibha Patel in 2012.

3. It is said that young mind are always the sharpest one and 17-year-old Shalini Ku-mari from Patna, Bihar, is the example of this. Shalini was only 13 years old when she re-invented the walker to more operational one for the needy. She named it ‘Modified walker with adjustable leg’. Four year back when her grandfather met with an accident he was pro-vided with a walker to help him move with it. But the walker was not helpful enough for her grandfather to climb the stairs, and there when she decided why not modify the walker where one can climb the stairs as well.

iNNoVatioN


Tree pruner machine is best when it come to pruning huge trees like mango, orange etc

“I saw how my grandfather was finding it difficult to climb the stairs when he met with an accident. And the simple walker was not helping him enough to move freely, especial-ly in climbing stairs. Then where I decided to modify this walker in better way,” speaks Shalini.

Her idea not only turned out to be an ef-fective solution but it also motivated a com-pany to carry her cause further across. Last year, Nagpur based company Kaveri Solution has got her nod to manufacture the ‘Modified walker with adjustable leg’ to sell it to health sector. The company has so far launched the model at two places- Nagpur and Raipur.

Shalini has recently finished her senior secondary exam from Sreechandra secondary high school, Patna and is waiting positively for the result. She aspires to become a doctor and help the needy with more such innovation.

4. Farmers are the major strength behind the success stories of India. And Gurmail Singh Dhonsi is one such farmer who is making his-tory with his innovations. 55-year-old Gurmail is from Ganganagar district of Rajashthan. He has two innovations in his name and he claims them to be one of its kinds in the world.

It was the year 2007 when both his innova-tion- ‘Agri waste compost maker’ and ‘Tree Pruner’ came into being. Unavailable of work-force, high labour cost and time consuming procedure in making compost and trimming of trees manually, pushed Gurmel to think harder against the plight of farmers and workers.

“These days almost every farmer in Raj-astha, Haryana Punjab and other states has tractors for their farm. Farming has taken a new definition with new technology but only for those who can purchase that facility at low cost. Therefore, I decided to produce a tech-nology which can replace the manual work and also to transform these tractors to a multi-tasker one,” says Gurmail.

Usually, to make compost out of wastages it requires many hrs as it is a laborious and time consuming job. Therefore, Gurmail observed the earthworm closely to develop the com-post aerator. It is in the form of tractor and has many blades attached to it for proper mixing and breaking of the waste. Initially the proce-dure charged Rs 6/tonne of compost produced but now it has come down to Rs 2.

The tree pruner machine on the other hand

is best when it come to pruning huge trees like mango, orange etc. The machine has been built in such a way that it can prune trees of 12-25 ft long. And in 1 hour, 200 plants can be pruned whereas it takes minimum 4 hrs to do the same work manually.

He has been awarded in the hands of Presi-dent of India, Pratibha Patel in 2012 and Pranab Mukherjee in 2014. Gurmail is hopeful to seek support from the state Govt so that he can carry his innovation across.

5. This man story is further interesting. He is Siddappa G Hullajogi, a 35-year-old farmer from Somapura village of Gadag district, Kar-nataka. Siddappa created a low-cost and effec-tive ‘Power Generating Water Mill’.

“Electricity is needed in every village. Don’t we have the right to get electricity facilities at villages? This is the reason why I decided to develop a technique where no villagers have to be dependent on anybody for electricity,” says Siddappa.

He used simple materials like timber and plastic buckets to create that water mill. Even though he never made it to school but nothing could hinder his sharp imagination for bring-ing it to life. The electricity generated out of the windmill is modest enough to run lights, TV, radio, charge mobile, and his farm field. Sid-dappa’s novel thought of bringing change into his village set an example for the rest.

With a total manufacturing cost of Rs 5,000, it is a small yet effective solution to electricity woes faced by maximum of villages in India.

(Anybody interested in linking with these innovators can contact NIF or Rural

Connect team)

iNVEStiGatioN

48 www.ruralconnect.inRural linking Hinterlands aPRil 2016

Even the makers of indian Constitution had argued two major issues - beef ban as well as alcohol prohibition

spreaDing alcoholism

While 49.2 percent of men with AUDs felt embarrassed by their problems with alcohol,

only 2.8% had sought treatment in the past 12 months.

According to famous sociologist MN Srinivas, prohibition of alcohol was actually a Sanskritic act, like that of cow slaughter. Actually, he meant that whatsoever explanation was given, the Indian impulse to prohibit generally came from a Brahminical sentiments.

No surprise, even the makers of

Indian Constitution argued two ma-jor issues - beef ban as well as alcohol prohibition, on 24 November 1948. After Kerela, Nagaland, Lakshdeep and Gujarat, Bihar has tried to fol-low the complete ban of alcohol. Sehore, India - December 29, 2015 – A recently published study in the BMJ has shown surprising statistics regarding the Epidemiological features of alcohol use in rural India. The study that was conducted on 3220 adults in Sehore District, India used the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)

to estimate the proportion of adults in the district, who consumed alcohol, and the proportion who had behav-iours consistent with alcohol use disor-ders (AUDs). Men with AUDs (AUDIT score ≥8) reported on whether and where they had sought treatment, and about alcohol-related internal stigma.

After the study, the researchers found that Nearly one in four men (23.8%) had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months, while few (0.6%) wom-en were consumers.

While 49.2% of men with AUDs felt

SoCial MENaCE

www.ruralconnect.in

SoCial MENaCE

embarrassed by their problems with al-cohol, only 2.8% had sought treatment in the past 12 months. The study called Epidemiological features of alcohol use in rural India: a population-based cross-sectional study is part of the PRIME research programme consor-tium. As part of PRIME and in part-nership with the Madhya Pradesh State Ministry of Health, Sehore District was selected to implement a district-level mental healthcare plan to integrate mental health diagnostic and treatment services into the primary healthcare sector.

The researchers concluded that there exists a need for effectively iden-tifying and treating adults with AUDs. Health promotion services, informed by commonly-expressed stigmatised beliefs held among those affected by AUDs and which are targeted at the most affected communities, may be an effective step in closing the treatment gap.

BACKGROUND

Alcohol misuse is a major and in-creasingly attributable risk factor for morbidity and mortality worldwide. Studies of communities in India show that while the prevalence of alcohol abstention is relatively high, those who do drink are highly likely to engage in hazardous, harmful or dependent drinking behaviours, here collectively referred to as alcohol use disorders (AUDs). While the impact of AUDs is direct (ie, through overdose or fetal alcohol syndrome), studies conducted in India demonstrate that much of the impact is mediated through increased risk of accidents, development or pro-gression of chronic disease and acqui-sition of infection. Further, individuals affected by AUDs have broader social impacts through the increased risk of violence and the health and economic consequences of consumption or inju-ry. AUDs have consistently been identi-fied as a public health concern over the past 20 years, during which time per capita consumption of alcohol has in-creased by 55%, and the treatment gap

for those affected has remained persis-tently high.

The effects of AUDs have motivated the development of programmes such as Screening and Brief Intervention, which aim to reduce the frequency and intensity of alcohol consumption episodes. Screening and Brief Interven-tion has been shown to be effective and cost-effective in low-income settings, where access to treatment services re-mains limited.

The treatment gap in India has not been well characterised, nor have the characteristics of those individuals who need services. As a prerequisite to the adaptation and implementation of Screening and Brief Intervention, we conducted a study to describe the epidemiological features of alcohol consumption and of treatment-seeking among adults living in a rural district in India.

MEHTODOLOGYSetting Sehore District is a predomi-

nantly rural district in central India,

49Rural linking Hinterlands aPRil 2016

After Bihar, which became fourth state in the country to ban alcohol, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa has announced the phased prohibition of alcohol if she is voted back to power.

Bihar enforced total prohibition on all sale and consumption of alcohol on April 5, triggered mixed reactions from people across the country.

While most ladies in the state wel-comed the decision, the enforcement of the ban, however, has put habitual drinkers in a spot.

On the first day of the ban, a Bihar Military Police constable, unable to stay off his favourite brand of alcohol, allegedly killed himself. Soon after-wards, media outlets reported that two

men struggling with alcohol withdraw-al symptoms died at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) merely days after the ban was put into effect.

What does alcohol do to our brains? A closer look at the biology behind the addiction reveals that it is not merely about the happy buzz that a drink or two might bring. Alcohol consump-tion, especially in heavy drinkers, ‘rewires’ their brains, affecting how neurotransmitters – chemicals that transmit signals between nerves – function. Adjusting to an alcohol-free life, thus, can be an agonising and long-drawn process that might require medical intervention.

DifficUlt KicKing tHe HaBit

with a population of 1.3 million people. At the time of this study, inpatient detoxification and rehabilitation services were available in Sehore city at a government-funded 15-bed facility. Ad-ditional detoxification and rehabilitation services were available in the public and private sectors in Bhopal city, approximately 34 km away from Sehore city. As part of the PRIME research pro-gramme consortium and in partnership with the Madhya Pradesh State Ministry of Health, Sehore District was selected to implement a district-level mental healthcare plan to integrate mental health diagnostic and treatment services into the primary healthcare sector.

The primary aim of the PRIME Community Surveys is to detect a change in treatment-seek-ing among adults with alcohol use or depressive disorders. We conducted a baseline round of data collection immediately prior to implementation of the district-level mental health plan, and plan to conduct a follow-up round of data collection 18 months later. Sample and questionnaire In Se-hore, a sample size of 3220 in each survey round provides over 80% power to detect a change in treatment seeking among adults with AUDs from 5% to 20% with a two-sided α of 0.05. We assumed that approximately 10% of adults would have AUDs. Since we planned to use a cluster sampling design, we used a conservative value of 0.10 for the intraclass correlation for treatment-seeking. We used 2011 census data to recruit this population based sample as follows: In propor-tion to the population distribution in the district,

we selected 70 villages from the rural stratum and 19 wards from the urban stratum. Within each selected village/ward, we used simple ran-dom sampling to select one electoral polling sta-tion’s voter list. Within the selected list, we ran-domly selected between 25 and 47 adults, with the variation in allocation being a function of the research assistants’ time availability.

THE OUTCOMEWe conducted the survey in two waves (May–

June 2013 and January–March 2014), during which time we selected 5170 adults from vot-ing lists for recruitment, of whom we were able to contact 3233. Of the 3233 adults we were able to contact, 3220 provided informed consent (survey response rate=99.6%). Consistent with the overall population distribution of Sehore District, most of the 3220 participants (78%) were recruited from the rural stratum and the remainder (22%) from the urban stratum. The socio-demographic characteristics of the sample are described in table 1. The mean age of the adults was 40.2 years (SD 15.1) and 55% were male. Most adults were Hindu (90%), currently married (85%) and had at least one child (94%). Educational attainment was low, as 28% of adults never attended school and another 23% started but did not complete primary school (23%). Few participants (9%) had a higher income oc-cupation. Across the entire population, 13.3% of adults (95% CI 11.6% to 15.2%) had consumed alcohol at least once in the past year; the socio-

Recent con-sumption of alcohol was acknowl-edged by a minority of women (0.6%)& men (23.8%), & the mean aUDiT scores for these groups were 0.03 and 1.8


SoCial MENaCE

SoCial MENaCE

demographic stratum-specific prevalences of alcohol consumption are presented in table 1. Alcohol consumption varied widely between socio-demographic groups: while 23.8% of men and 14.7% of Hindus had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months, only 0.6% of women and 1.2% of Muslims did. Among those who had recently consumed alcohol, the internal consis-tency of the AUDIT screening tool was high.

Recent consumption of alcohol was acknowl-edged by a minority of women (0.6%) and men (23.8%), and the mean AUDIT scores for these groups were 0.03 and 1.8, respectively. Among those who had recently consumed alcohol, the mean AUDIT score was 7.5; 33.2% of these in-dividuals had an AUDIT score which was con-sistent with hazardous alcohol consumption behaviour

DISCUSSIONIn Sehore District, we found that a minority

(13.3%) of adults consumed alcohol in the past 1 year, though a substantial proportion (42%) of the adults who did consume alcohol had behav-iours consistent with alcohol use disorders. AU-DIT scores were positively associated education-al attainment, urban residence, having children, high-quality housing, depression severity, dis-ability severity and usage of tobacco products. Adults who had AUDs were unlikely to have sought treatment from a medical provider, were likely to feel personal shame, but were not likely to feel social stigma. The PRIME Community Survey is notable for being a large, population-based survey of alcohol use in Sehore District, and this is the first such study to be conducted in Madhya Pradesh State in 10 years. That pri-or study only considered whether respondents consumed alcohol or not and combined data across multiple states in India. These data ad-

vance understanding by measuring the intensity of alcohol use, and in a single, defined popula-tion. We measured alcohol use with the AUDIT tool, which had been validated elsewhere in India, and demonstrated here a high value for internal consistency. The drinking population in Sehore District comprised a small proportion of men from the general population, within which a large proportion engages in hazardous, harm-ful or dependent drinking behaviours (table 2). These findings are consistent with the two other alcohol surveys conducted in Madhya Pradesh state47 48 as well as elsewhere in India7 25 49). Multiround cross-sectional studies such as the PRIME Community Surveys are required to evaluate whether the prevalence of drinkers is increasing, particularly among women and whether those who do drink are increasing their consumption intensity. An understanding of these trends will help guide the health promo-tion messaging for the targeted population, and further support expansion of programmes for screening and brief intervention, and more in-tensive programmatic interventions.

THE WAY FORWARDA need exists for effectively identifying and

treating adults with AUDs. Health promotion services, informed by commonly-expressed stigmatised beliefs held among those affected by AUDs and which are targeted at the most af-fected communities, may be an effective step in closing the treatment gap.

Health pro-motion services, informed by commonly-expressed stigmatised beliefs held among those affected by aUDs are targeted at the most af-fected com-munities

STRENgTHS aNd lImITaTIONS Of THIS STudy4�This is the first population-based survey of alcohol

use to be conducted in Madhya Pradesh, India in 10 years, and one of the few studies of alcohol use in India to include women.4�We used a widely validated screening tool (AU-

DIT) to identify participants who had alcohol use disorders.4�Since this is a cross-sectional study, we are unable to

determine whether any of the factors associated with AUDIT scores are causal



From a taboo topic it could do with becoming more mainstream, trade its grimly pronounced death sentence for silver linings, anjali awasthi discusses sociological barriers in cancer management

Even as the number of cancer cases in India is acceler-ating with a million new cases being reported every year, experts warn that the incidence of the killer dis-ease is expected to rise five-fold by 2025.

Nearly 500,000 people die of cancer in India yearly. How-ever, this number is expected to rise to 700,000 by 2015, ac-cording to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Despite its high prevalence rate, it's a huge concern that the country’s healthcare infrastructure is poorly prepared to deal with all facets of cancer care – prevention, early detec-tion, treatment and palliative care. In this not so encouraging

story is the positive aspect that, in pockets latest advances in cancer treatment have become available in India simultane-ously as they are available/ approved for clinical application in the West.

SOCIal TaBOOS

Major sociocultural issues that affect approaches to health-care in rural India include social taboos, castes, gender in-equality, low regard for health as a priority, nihilistic ap-proaches to cancer diagnosis (i.e. cancer fatalism), blind faith in traditional methods for healing, religious dynamics and

Breaking the last taboo

HEaltHCarE


Breaking the last taboogender inequal-ity exists in many parts of india, which results in neglect of many fe-male health problems. in patriarchal, men have power and authority both in the community and in the family

HEaltHCarE

widespread superstitions. Although these fac-tors are more prevalent in rural India, they also persist in urban area.

Social taboos frequently prevent individuals from seeking conventional health-care assess-ments and subsequently lead to advanced stages of disease by the time a trained doctor is seen, particularly for socially stigmatized diseases such as cancer. Patients can often keep a diagno-sis of cancer secret, and go to extreme lengths to hide a cancer diagnosis from friends and family, even at the cost of compromising treatment and outcomes. Even after the confirmation of a can-cer diagnosis, the desire of patients to maintain normality in their life can negatively affect ac-ceptance of recommended care, frequently lead-ing to irregular attendance for medical follow-up and ultimately impairing outcomes.

gENdER dISPaRITyGender inequality exists in many parts of

India, which results in neglect of many female health problems. India still remains patriarchal, with men having power and authority both in the community and in the family. Often the management of health problems in women and

elderly is given less priority than are health prob-lems affecting men and young family members. Findings from observational studies suggest that women with breast cancer frequently present at more advanced stage of disease in India than in developed countries. Among the many reasons for delayed diagnosis is patient illiteracy, health decisions often made by other members of the family, belief that undergoing a procedure is un-necessary in the absence of symptoms, fear of the possibility of cancer diagnosis, fear of un-dergoing gynecological examination even by a female health worker and fear of the instrumen-tation procedure or possible sterilization.

CulTuRal aPOlOguESeveral cultural myths exist regarding cancer,

which are critical obstacles to expanded cancer control and care in India. One popular myth is that cancer is caused due to spiritual curses, bad spirits or as punishment from a past misdeed. This attribution of cancer to spiritual origins leads to acceptance of disease without seeking healthcare. In addition, the cancer sufferer may feel ashamed of their ‘wrongdoings’ and hide their symptoms, delaying diagnosis. Also, peo-ple even believe that you ca ‘catch’ (spread) the disease from those who have it.

A nihilistic attitude towards cancer can also cause individuals to not present for medical re-views. Cancer fatalism – the belief that death is inevitable when cancer is present – has been identified as a barrier to participation in cancer screening, detection and treatment.

Last but not least, the false religious faith is so pervasive that so-called healers can deceive vul-nerable people. These medicine men frequently rely on chants, pujas and sacred powders to cure patients with this disease. Strong faith in these healers prevents establishment of modern sci-entific medicine in more remote rural areas in India.

THE TREaTmENTDr. Sapna Nangia, Cancer specialist at the In-

draprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, tells us some of the latest advances in cancer treatment.

Targeted treatment: Various cellular path-ways, often specific to the type of cancer, allow cancer cells to become immortal, acquire blood


supply, divide in an uncontrolled manner and spread, leading to accumulation of large num-bers of abnormal cancer cells. Targeted treat-ments are designed to disrupt these pathways, thus interfering with the cancerous characteris-tics of these cells.

According to Dr. Nangia, the earliest targeted treatment, imatinib, was approved for treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia, a kind of blood cancer, in 2001. It acted on an enzyme that was unique to the cancerous cell and was thus “tar-geted therapy”. Since then, targeted therapies have lead to dramatic improvements in the life span of breast cancer and lung cancer patients, by the administration of the drugs trastuzumab and tyrosine kinase inhibitors respectively, in patients whose cancer cells carried pathways that were targeted by these drugs. In addition, targeted treatments like sorafenib, sunitinib and pazopanib have lead to improvement in the life span of patients suffering from liver and kidney cancer, respectively, cancers which were consid-ered resistant to treatment.

Stereotactic Ablative Radiosurgery: Radio-therapy, i.e. the use of x-rays to kill cancer cells has seen dramatic improvements in radiation delivery machines, linear accelerators as well as in computer software. This has led to great preci-sion in the delivery of radiotherapy to tumours and avoidance of the same in neighbouring nor-mal structures.

As per Dr. Nangia, this ability has been har-nessed very effectively to give very large focused doses of radiation in one to five fractions to destroy early stage lung cancer. This technique which is also called Stereotactic Body Radio-therapy (SBRT) results in excellent cure rates in early stage lung cancer patients who are unable

to undergo surgery and is under investigation as the first option for lung cancer patients.

This treatment technique is also a possibil-ity of cure in patients with limited spread from breast cancer, large intestine cancer, kidney can-cer and others.

Mass screening for cervical cancer using VIA technique: A simple method of screening for cervical cancer using vinegar , carried out by health workers, has led to a 30 % reduction of dy-ing from cancer of the opening of the uterus, i.e. cervical cancer. Greater participation of NGOs, organizations like Rotary, Lions etc. along with greater governmental action is required to re-duce the incidence of this preventable cancer. A quarter of the world’s cervical cancer patients are in India.

Robotic Surgery for Prostate Cancer: Robotic surgery marries the benefits of laparoscopy i.e. surgery using scopes rather than large incisions to reach the surgical field, highly manoeuvrable surgical instruments and magnification to the tune of 40 times normal vison, to allow the sur-geon to effectively perform surgery in the nar-row male pelvis. This is rapidly becoming the preferred approach in carefully selected patients. Image Guided Radiotherapy is the treatment of choice in advanced patients not fit to undergo surgery for prostate cancer.

Research is ongoing in all aspects of cancer diagnosis and management and doctors and patients can look forward to a slow and steady improvement in the cure rates for cancer.

THE uPSHOTThus, the underlying cultural beliefs and in-

dividual perceptions about cancer must be spe-cifically addressed to develop effective screening and treatment approaches. Educational material must be designed to better engage people and meet the spiritual, cultural and physical needs that are imperative for a holistic approach in the cancer management.

a simple method of screening for cervical cancer us-ing vinegar, carried out by health workers, has led to a 30% reduction of dying from cancer

HEaltHCarE

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Nestled in the foot-hills of mighty Himalayas is the one of the most contested and counter-claimed terri-

tories on the world map today: Kashmir. Surrounded by a picturesque landscapes and lakes, this small place was consid-ered to be the most sought-after tourist destination across the world. Over the years Kashmir has gained a status of world's most militarized zone. Kashmir is sandwiched between three nuclear-armed countries: India, Pakistan and China.

In 1947 when both the new indepen-dent nations India and Pakistan gained independence from foreign rule, duo claimed the princely state of Jammu and

Kashmir. The fate of Jammu & Kashmir remained undecided. And undecided was Maharaja Hari Singh, the autocratic Dogra ruler of Jammu and Kashmir at that time. The Maharaja had a choice to either accede to India or Pakistan. As the Pakistani Raiders invaded to forc-ibly merge Kashmir with Pakistan, the nervous Maharaja in utmost hesitancy signed the contentious “Instrument of Accession” with India on October 26, 1947.The “Instrument of Accession” re-mains fiercely contested since.

POLITICAL ISSUEThe sentiment for Kashmir’s inde-

pendence and the right to self-determi-nation runs very deep. Which has made

the situation vulnerable and since then the place has remained the epicenter of political hiccups, with India and Paki-stan having fought nearly four wars over it. Looking insight at the geo-strategic and military significance of the entire region tied with the reality that giant re-sources of water it holds back in its gla-ciers which undeniably prophesizes that the region is oath to remain a forceful conflict zones in coming years.

Kashmiris the only ethnic Muslim majority state of India which has had very tensed connection, with New Delhi all through the following decades until it reached its flashpoint in 1989-　when the youth here crossed over to Pakistan-held Kashmir for arms training. Kash-

KasHmir

Kashmir has been a hot topic for a long period now. Here’s an account of the state through an eye of a Kashmir-based journalist Junaid Rather

tHe issUes of

StatE


StatE

mir valley in the midst of a major insurgency and counter-insurgency over the last two de-cades has seen more than 50,000 people dead, other estimates say the number of killed in last 20 years is nearly 1,00,000. The militant move-ment in Kashmir began in late 1980s when the youth here crossed over to Pakistan adminis-tered Kashmir for arms training. India reacted to the local militant movement with extreme repression burning down neighborhoods and markets, killing people on suspicion and mass arrests.

Disappearance and sexual violence by the se-curity forces and militants have resulted in the rise to psychiatric and psychosomatic illnesses, especially in women. The turmoil in the Valley has imprinted scars on the minds of women.

MILITANT ISSUEAs Mugli Begum of Habba Kadal in old city

of Srinagar lay critically ill three years ago, she beseeched 50-year-old Parveena Ahangar to carry on the search for her disappeared son. Mugli’s, often called the lonely mother of Kash-mir searched for his son Nazir Ahmad Teli for 19 long years. The Kashmir’s lonely mother would often say that in the first September of the first tehreek (first year of militant struggle in) – her teacher son Nazir left for school. She never saw him again – she never did and, now, she never will. Mugli had a rare honor that no mother would like to take. She was among the first mothers of Kashmir whose sons vanished. The tragic club of several thousand women whose young sons or husbands have disap-peared, majority of them after being picked up by Indian government forces formed the Asso-ciation of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Mugli was the first member and Parveena, who attended school till class 8th, the guiding power.

Parveena Ahangar herself is a victim, her 16-year-old son, Javid Ahmed, has been missing for the last 23 years after allegedly been picked up by the armed forces. Parveena Ahangar, 50, is one among the victims of conflict whose dear ones are missing. She narrated the painful story of his teenage son who was whisked away from Batamaloo locality of Srinagar by security forc-es in 1990.

Reacting on the issue, Parveena Ahangar said that “Whilst I was making the rounds of

so many prisons, detention centers and courts across India to uncover the mystery of my dis-appeared son I felt helpless. My voice was the lone cry in the dark. But then I met hundreds of others like me and I realized that collectively we could make an impact.”

These women are part of the tragic landscape of Kashmir. Their sons and husbands were tak-en away in the night, from the markets, homes and streets. Many years after the men are among the thousands who have disappeared since the insurgency erupted in Kashmir.

ISSUES OF VIOLENCEOne of the ugliest facet of Conflict is the re-

petitive Cycles of violence, abuse and torture that have led to at least two generations of youth with deep psychological trauma and anunceas-ing despondency. Any conflict diagnosis would have a manifested victimhood most vivid in its youth and given a grim prognosis of Kashmir imbroglio for the reasons stated in this essay, the youth of　Kashmir　continue to find them-selves enmeshed and entrenched in abellicose uncertain scenario, where their past seems to be their looming future as well. The conflict is as live today as it was during the armed insurgen-cy, triggered with a rigged election which the youth saw as the last nail in the coffin of trust between New Delhi and Kashmir.

However, the counter insurgency has failed to tackle the militant movement. Despite the claims that militant moment is under control by the Indian state, but the reality is that it has

One of the ugliest facet of conflict is the repetitive cycles of vio-lence, abuse and torture that have led to at least two genera-tions of youth with deep psychologi-cal trauma


Situation remains as precarious as ever and any small incident can induce potentially dangerous law and order equations foddering youth

not bowed down. The scenario has not changed initially there were foreign militants but the dynamics have changed. Now the set-up is hi-jacked by a local guerillas. In 2014, as per the www.satp.org, as many as 21 militant incidents had taken place in Kashmir Valley.

“In 2014, all of 101 militants have been elimi-nated which is much higher than the 62 in 2013 and 69 in 2012. And even as we began this year, we already had 10 militants neutralized. So I do not think the situation is grave,” newspa-pers have quoted General Officer Commanding (GOC) 15 Corps, Lt General Subrata Saha.

ISSUE OF JIHAD

The militancy in Kashmir is witnessing a lo-cal patronage from almost all quarters. There is a respect for those who lose their life for the land and for them it is a holy war - ‘Jihad’. One of the controversies which was evoked in the recent past was when two local boys who had joined militant ranks in Hizbul Mujahidin were killed in an encounter on January 27, 2015. The en-counter lasted for around 4 hours, and resulted in the death of colonel Munindra Nanth Rai and Head Constable Sanjay Kumar of Special Op-eration Group (SOG). Soon after the Death of the Indian Cops, the whole Indian state started mourning the death of its two soldiers. And the same happened in Kashmir; the two militants who died were given a high honor in which thousands of people joined their funeral and were shouting slogans, Asalam Asalam aye Sha-hedo Asalam, Aajteremout pay rohrahahaias-maan." (Peace, Peace Oh the Martyr peace be on you, Today heavens are crying on your death)

Even the women also assemble outside fu-

neral ground and start singing hymns for the departed souls. This is how the discourse chang-es and the politics of language become impor-tant. Is it so simple to change the discourse or it is actually beyond that which we need to un-derstand?

STRUGGLES OF YOUTHSWhen looking in hindsight and indexing

numbers, the stats of death and destruction only seems to compound an iffy mindset that Kash-mir’s youth struggles to cope with. Despite the so called rehabilitation schemes launched by the In-dian state to seemingly regain the trust and con-fidence of youth, little has changed on ground. Situation remains as precarious as ever and any small incident can induce potentially dangerous law and order equations foddering youth. The massive public unrest of 2008, 10, and 13 being some active reminders of how quickly, a rela-tively small incident can snowball and engulf its youth populace within a matter of hours.

The Indian financial injections are achieving little in absence of any concrete political long term solutions and are proving to be daily first aids dressings to a much more serious and ma-lignant wounds. Youth continue to harbor deep frustration and resentment at the pace and scale of their participation. The majority of the valley young generation feels let down even with the economic incentives that government of India is offering believing that they are mere eyewash and further overwhelmingly favoring the youth of Jammu who share a very skeptic and grudg-ing past vis-à-vis Kashmiris. Similarly, even the local empowerment policy is something they are seeing little for themselves. Given the prevalent corruption, Jammu and Kashmir being rated as one among the most corrupt state of India the youth have been deprived of any participa-tory role in village, town and urban body affairs and decision-making processes. This is further frustrating youth and reinforcing their sense of alienation.

Independent MLA Engineer Rashid says that Indian state has failed to their commitments. They have not politically accommodated the youth that has led to disappointment.

“The need of an hour is that India has to identify the problem and agree to a common grounds,” He said.

(The writer is a Kashmir-based journalist. His views are personal)

StatE

StatE

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Unrelenting climate change and widespread rain over the past two months have exstensively damaged several standing crops, further wreaking a havoc and

countrywide farmers’ suicide

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Bureaucratic intercession

21 Governance

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Rama Nawami is a festival to celebrate the birth of the god Ram to King Dasharatha and Queen Kausalya in Ayodhya. Ram, the

seventh avatar of Vishnu, is one of the oldest avatars of Lord Vishnu having a human form. The holy day falls in the Shukla Paksha on the Navami, the ninth day of the month of Chaitra in the Hindu calendar. Thus it is also known as Chaitra Masa Suklapaksha Navami, and marks the end of the nine-day Chai-tra-Navaratri (Vasanta Navaratri) celebrations. Ram Navami is one of the most important Hindu festi-vals.

celeBrating BirtH of lorD ram

photo feature

PHoto FEatUrE


At some places the festival lasts the whole nine days of the Navaratri, thus the period is called ‘Sri Ram Navaratra’. It is marked by continuous recitals, Akhand Paath, mostly of the Ramcharitamanas, organized several days in advance to culminate on this day, with elaborate bhajan, kirtan and distribution of prasad after the puja and aarti. Images of the infant Ram are placed on cradles and rocked by devo-tees. Community meals are also organized. Since Ram is believed to have been born at noon, temples and family shrines are elaborately decorated and traditional prayers are chanted together by the family in the morning.

www.ruralconnect.in

reminiscence

How do see Bollywood music from an artist's per-spective?

I've sung for Bollywood. But whatever I sing, it has to be something that I do justice to. I don't see my-self singing the kind of songs that are being composed nowadays. If everyone keeps running after creating masala songs for the industry, it may prove to be a threat to other genres of music specific to Indian cul-ture. Bollywood music is being played in every house-hold, mostly because they are easily accessible. I have nothing against it as I really enjoy it. But in the process we are losing out on the other genres. It would be very tragic if we lost them, as a lot of it will n e v e r come back.

How can we popularise and preserve the wide variety of musical styles and

genres of differ-ent parts of the country?

There's a huge variety in Indian

music, whether old or adapted ones that highlight the diversity. We see a majority of Bollywood music played, but that doesn't represent the entire Indian music. We need to promote and propagate Indian music.

Do you see a downfall in pop albums in the Indian music industry lately?

I don't agree that pop albums have lost their charm. Just like we have parallel cinema along with commer-cial cinema, there is alternative music industry that is producing, executing material of all kinds and has a vi-brant collection of music. There are many people who are coming up with albums with their original songs and compositions.

How do see that some of your numbers like 'Ali More Angana`, `Ab Ke Sawan` became iconic classical-modern renditions and attracted youths?

No piece of work can be categorised as having been formulated for some particular category. It does not work like that. You can never say that this will work with the youth or something else will for the serious classical music listener. When I work, I work for the joy of it. And if it becomes successful with someone or the youth, that’s wonderful. The point at the end is to enjoy.

As a woman, what challenges did you face in breaking into the professional singing arena?

There are so many women today in Hindustani classical music, especially from the first or second

generation of musicians. One reason could be that women are still not considered the main bread-

winners. You often hear women artists saying it's okay that it is not very paying, because I don’t run my home with the money I earn from music. Some do film work; others have set up studios which are their main source of income. Then it becomes okay to turn mag-nanimous and talk about ‘art for art’s sake’. For those who depend on their earnings as mu-sicians, it is not possible to become so mag-nanimous. So, they are branded commercial.

62 Rural linking Hinterlands aPRil 2016

"With Bollywood music, we are losing out on the other genres"

sHUBHa mUDgal

Veteran Singer

www.ruralconnect.in Rural Linking Hinterlands apRiL 2016 63NTPC, ERHQ-1, 2nd Floor, Lok Nayar, Jai Prakash Bhawan, Dak Bunglow Chowk,

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