Of Digital Green and Makkal TV

He sounded American on phone.  I would have taken him to be one, had I not read about Rikin Gandhi and his work , of  spreading awareness among farmers about improved farm practices through video-clips . Mr Gandhi helms Digital Green , NGO that produces farm community related video shorts,  and shows them to village groups on  DVD, laptop and rural cable network.

My purpose in phoning   Mr Gandhi was to put him on to Mr V Haridasan,  Chennai-based farm expert dedicated to value-addition in farm produce at the village level,  and promoting organic retail outlets in cities.  Mr Haridasan, with hands-on experience in value-addition and  in marketing a wide range of value-added organic produce, shares his experience with farmers on TV and in  periodic workshop held  in Chennai. Farmers,  many of them uneducated and from remote parts of rural Tamilnadu have benefited the most from  Mr Haridasan’s TV appearance in a Saturday  phone-in programme – Uzhavar Santhai – on Makkal TV.  Widespread use of cell, notably in rural areas,  and access to cable TV network  have contributed to a  growing awareness, even among unlettered farmers, about the economics of value-addition to farm produce and their marketablity through urban network of organic retails.

My thoughts, on reading about Digital Green, were 1) Mr Gandhi and Mr Haridasan are up the same street, in reaching  out to small farmers through digital technology; 2) Low literacy  level of our farming community  is no constraint in digital  communication;  and 3) A  Gandhi-Haridasan tie-up can help snergize their efforts to optimize farm output and raise rural living standards.  It is reckoned that nearly 80 percent of 37,000 farmers,  exposed to Digital Green videos,  have adopted fresh farm ideas,  in contrast to the 10-15 percent success in respect of   conventional extension approach in farming.

Mr Gandhi’s NGO has archived over 1,100 video-clips on a range of farm practices – ‘weeding in paddy’,'staking in mango’,  preparing  vegetable nursery bed,  crop sowing practices , SHG micro credit, pulses seed storage, marigold cultivation, tomato transplant, vermi composts. Video clips are in the languages/dialects of the areas where Digital Green has its presence – Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand,  MP, and Karnataka. Apart from the mainstream regional languages of the relevant states,  they have produced video films in  Gondi,  Bhili,  Neemadi,  Malvi,  Santhali and a host of other tongues.

Tamil is not among them , because  Digital Green has, till date,  no presence  in Tamilnadu. And Mr Haridasan and Makkal TV work mainly in Tamilnadu.  This  need not be a constriant.  In fact, it can be turned into an opportunity, if only Digital Green and Makkal TV adopt a pro-active approach in reaching out to each other,  in their efforts  to  improve the lot of   our small farmers .

Digital Green could work with Makkal TV to produce Tamil version of  relevant archive footage,  and also  film fresh video clips in Tamil.  Mr Haridasan can draw on the experience/expertise of  Mr Gandhi in producing  instructive video clips on  value-addition to farm produce, on the setting up of organic retail outlet for domestic market,  and on exports potential for value-added farm produce.

Contact details : Mr Rikin Gandhi -   rikin@digitalgreen.org   Phone: 011-41881037 and 41881038.
Mr V Haridasan -  nvelaanmai@rediffmail.com     Cell: 94441 46807 / 94442 83129 ;  Makkal TV – 044 28261111

2011: My wish list for greening Mysore

The green initiative by  the Ambaji Temple trust in Gujarat set me thinking of Mysore,  my town . Our town is  a hub of sort  for mutts, which have acquired govt. land and set up ashrams . And their spiritual heads such as JSS swamiji ,  and Ganapathi Sachidananda , are resourceful. They have the clout with the authorities ; and they can count on a public following.  I don’t know if they address environmental concerns  when they address their followers .

I would like to see them promoting tree-planting,  as Jaggi Vasudev does. In Gujarat the  Ambaji Trust,  in association with district officials,  has launched the ‘Green Katha’  movement.  Formatted as ‘harikatha (spiritual discourse) Ambaji’s  ‘Green Katha’ draws  from epics and the Hindu mythology to highlight the benefits of protecting trees and increasing green cover.  The discourse  is followed by distribution of saplings by way of  ‘prasad‘. The Banaskantha district collector  is quoted in the Deccan Herald as saying, “while in other religious gatherings, devotees receive sweets, after the katha, people here get saplings”.

Friends of Roadside Trees,  a Mysore group, has been trying to promote  with little sucess,  tree planting  in the city . And my wish list for Mysore draws from the ideas thrown up in their blog .

I wish Sri  Raghavendra temple on N S Rd. and  Vontikoppal Venkateswara  take the lead in introducing  ‘vriksharchana’ (click for details).

2) I wish school principals and teachers talk every parent  into planting a sapling or two to mark the day his/her child starts going to school. Besides involving children in taking care of plants,  parents can watch the sapling grow with their child.

3) I wish those sending  birthday/anniversary  bouquet to their dear ones  start  saying  it with a sapling,  instead ;  and I wish saplings are made available at the florists .

4) I wish VIPs invited to ceremonial tape-cutting and lamp- lighting at public functions insist on doing the honours by planting  a sapling.

5) I wish the govt. does not renew the licence (that expired in 2006)  to the Mysore Race Club ; and,  that the huge chunk of land in their possession is developed into a green lung space. I wish the political executives  view this issue in a long-term perspective, keeping in mind  Mysore’s  enviornmental needs . The open space as maintained by the race club  does not address these concerns. A well maintained grass-patch is not necessarily enviornment-friendly. It requires much water and sizeable fertiliser input to keep the grass green.

6) I wish  hotel owners  Sandesh,  Giri  and a host of others think green ;  and  persuade  their guests to plant saplings at a designated park, to mark their visit to the heritage city.  They can take back with them snapshots of the sapling they planted during Mysore visit.

7) I wish tour conductors do the same for high-ticket tourists doing Karnataka in the Golden Chariot. The luxury trains visits Mysore every Tuesday.

8)  I wish  all Mysore-based  companies adopt tree-planting as CSR programme.  Some of them plant saplings in the name of every employee they have on the payroll.

9) I wish the retail outlet of organic farmers association  – NESERA – sells saplings, along with organic fruits, vegetables and other produce.

10)  And I wish the local media and  district authorities recognize the work of the likes of the roadside tree-planter K R Gurukar.

Homestays in Coorg

Karnataka tourism department’s  gripe is that most homestays in Kodagu  ignore  them in the matter of registration.  Of the 1000 odd homestays in the coffee district no more than 240 have registered  themselves with the tourism dept.  For most  homestay owners  ‘registration’  translates into ‘regulations’ , an annual tax of up to  Rs.15,000 , and  grading of homestays into ‘silver’ and  ‘gold’  class.  The state tourism director says homestays  registered with them come in for inspection and regulation.

Question is whether tourism dept.  registration,  or the lack of it,  weighs  with tour operators.  Does registration  help homestay owners  increase their business ?  That three out of every four homestays in Coorg haven’t gone in for registration with the department conveys its own message. The tourism dept. would have us believe that registration ensures upkeep of  standards laid down by the department.  But then there are well-maintained homestays that are not registered with the dept.,  says a newspaper report.   A report in The Hindu cites  manager of a tourist information centre as saying complaints regarding inadequate amenities, poor service, and even harassment of guests have become common,  apparently,  because of so many unregistered homestays.   Doesn’t he mean  that  unregistered units are suspect ?

I , for one , would like to see The Hindu carrying a follow-up  report telling us what homestay owners have to say, and   why so many of them  in Kodagu haven’t found it necessary to  registered their units with the department.  Apparently, they are not  losing business by staying unregistered.  Homestays  represent a niche in the hospitality sector,  and in  Madikeri and its surroundings their  numbers  make it a highly competitive  enterprise.  In such business environment  you can’t get away with shoddy  service.  Pleasing tourists with good service plus  something about which they talk to friends or  write home about is key to staying in the homestay business. The type of tourists who opt for homestay  come informed and  know enough about what to expect, where ,  anywhere they travel.  Their source of information are varied -  homestay websites,  Facebook pages,  travel  blogs,  e-groups and other social networking media .

Yoga tourism in Mysore  has given rise to a  support service system –   yoga websites and student blogs -  that tells intending visitors  to Mysore   where to rent rooms in Gokulam and other areas ,  what to eat , and where to shop,  get clothes tailored, rent a bike, and places to avoid.  Yoga tourism and those making a living on it do very well without much help (interference) from the tourism dept.

Dharmasthala

Haven’t we heard people say,  ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ ? If there is a place where this cliche doesn’t apply, it is   Dharmasthala;  it’s  not just the lunch that’s free here. Our taxi driver who has been here before spoke of free accommodation for pilgrims.  But then he took Rs.50 from me as parking fee at the car park in front of the Manjunath Dharmasthala temple.  I wonder who runs  this parking lot.

They have several residental blocks such as this one.  The Rs.10  you pay when you move into one of these rooms is paid back when you vacate and hand in the key.
Dharmasthala is  a one-class temple,  where everyone  joins the same queue – for dharma darshan.  The security man here is considerate in the case of senior citizens who are allowed to take a short cut that meets  the queue at the inner courtyard of the Manujnatha temple.
This is as close as you can get to the main shrine for taking pictures.  It is not just  photography that is banned inside the temple. Also not allowed are children below aged 2 (didn’t get to ask them why);   cell-phone that is  switched on, and men in half-pants with their shirts and vests on. I guess they don’t allow females in jeans and nighties either.

Moving shirtless inside the temple came as a relief though, for we visited the place during those   sweltering days before monsoon.  The temple authorities have thoughtlfully fixed overhead  tabletop fans every few yards in the queue on  temple parikrama.

Bellary Investment Meet

The two-day Global Investors  Meet (GIM)  in Bangalore turned into a Bellary investment meet.   Mr Lakshmi  (Arcelor) Mittal and the Karnataka govt.  have plans to  turn Bellary into a steel city.  Known for large scale iron ore mining  Bellary is  poised to becoming  man-made environmental ghetto.  Mr Mittal has signed an MoU for a 6 mill tonne steel plant in in the district . Karnataka urban development  minister, Mr S Suresh Kumar  spoke of plans for a steel city in the same area entailing an investment of Rs.80,000 crores.

As if this isn’t enough by way of  state-sponsored high pollutant investment the minister Mr Kumar spoke of other plans,   not just for Bellary but  also Bagalkot, Chitradurga and Gulburga.  If the govt.  has its way,  these districts would be turned into a cement belt.  Steel and cement,  granite and deep-drilling for gold were the sectors that attracted attention of delegates to  GIM-B . Mr Azim Premji of Wipro faults Karnataka for not being as  ‘aggressive’  in drawing  investment in  manufaturing, as neighbouring Tamilnadu which has roped in Dell and Nokia for hardware manufacturing.

News reports on   GIM-B  should set us thinking,  if Karnataka, in the  name of promoting development,  isn’t inviting environmental problems on a massive scale.  Steel and cement are  energy-intensive and high pollutant sectors, whose  long-term social costs  are bound to be higher than the immediate and  mid-term economic benefits  Viewed in this light Karnataka’s development agenda  smacks of  economic adventurism,  for which future generations may well have to pay a  high environmental cost.  A mitigating factor is that  expectations built up at international investors gatherings are never fully  realised.  MoUs that are signed with such media fuss  and fanfare  do not translate into reality. I’m not saying this .  Mr Mittal did, at a Bangalore press meet soon after he signed the first of the MoUs  at the Bangalore  Global Investors Meet. Mr Mittal admits that his company is faced with, in Orissa and Jharkhand  ‘lots of issues , particularly relating to environmental clearances and protests by local bodies”.

Udupi Krishna temple

You get to see the deity only through a small window; and yet pilgrims throng  Sri Krishna temple in Udupi in thousands all round the year. You see the Lord through the window with nine holes ; exquisitely carved and silver-plated window , but a window all the same.  A young man on security duty close to the view-window suggested we have a look-see through each of the nine holes in the window, for maxing the spiritual effect.
He wouldn’t have suggested such a thing during rush-hour. Would have been busy moving the queue of pilgrims.  We made it to the temple around 6.30 a m,  on the say-so of a long-time Udupi resident. He said the temple opened at 4 a m and there wasn’t much rush till 7 a m. We went around the the place at a leisurely pace ;  didn’t have to queue anywhere.
Main entrance to the temple is  modest in appearance  in contrast to this adjacent hall.
At the far end of this courtyard is the shed where the temple elephant is parked. It is a no-photo shed, I wonder why. The place was relatively deserted when we were there.  Early morning visitors were either local residents or out-of-towners coming in straight  from the railway station or central bus stand.  They have public bath and toilets within the temple complex.
One could see folks bathing in the temple tank.  Ceremonial floats are held in the sacred pond to mark festive occasions.  As in other temples in this part of Karnataka – Mukambika, Dharmasthala and Subramanya -  lunch is on the house for all comers.  We were much too early, though a kindly lady at the temple  asked us to stay on till 10.30 a m when they start serving food.  Those who make contribution to the daily Annadhana at the temple are entitled to special prasad,  with compliments from the trustees of Sri Krishna Mutt. They also run a mid-day meals programme  that benefits 32,000 students in 132 schools in the area.

More photos on facebook.

Missing rear wheel

This can happen anywhere in India, I suppose.  So long as we have truck drivers with scant regard for safety norms. Driver of this heavy-duty vehicle appears  particularly indifferent to the danger he posed to others on  road.  Of course we can’t expect the police presence  everywhere,  at all times.  Highway patrolling is there,  but we usually see them on the scene after an accident. Those of us on road who witnessed this speeding truck with a missing rear-wheel  had an obligation to report . But then  we are always in a hurry to get somewhere,  aren’t we ?

I happened by this heavy-duty  truck running on three rear wheels on a  highway near Udupi.  It was nearly 8 p m and I was on road in a car,  on way to Saligrama,  about 20 km from Udupi, for a wedding reception. We were running late ;  and the groom was in the car with me.  I cite this not as an excuse, but as a statement of my circumstances. Incidentally,  I wonder which number one dials  to report a speeding truck on three rear-wheels;  to report an accident waiting to happen on inter-state highway.
Glare from headlights of an oncoming vehicle indicates the speed at which the truck ahead of our taxi – a Tata Indica – was  moving.. I took these shots with an amateur camera, from the front-seat, under poor light beamed  from our car headlights. Taxi-driver Lakshmana didn’t want to get too close to or  stay behind the heavy vehicle any more than the moving traffic warranted . He was in a hurry to overtake at the first available opening on road ahead, saying it was dangerous to be behind the vehicle with a missing rear-wheel. What is not evident in the picture is the right wheel of the truck wobbled as it sped.

Pushing green agenda

Getting people excited about planting trees is a tall order. So I realised , at a recent outing  with a couple of friends in Mysore,  engaged in a tree-planting programme  at  Giridarshini Layout on T Narsipura Road. The sight of  Mr K N Sreenivasa and Mr K R Gurukar, 68,  digging plant  beds on roadside,  attracted attention from passers-by ,  but little support from local  residents.  Giridarshiini is a middle-class locality with spacious  houses, but poor roads and other infrastructure . And  not many  roadside trees .  It ought to have been an ideal place for community initiative in tree-planting.

Apparently, we failed in motivating Giridarshini folks.  Maybe , we weren’t going about it the right way.  Perhaps, we targeted a wrong class of  people who  minded their own business.  I believe , if we were  planting roadside saplings  in a poorer class area, we would have found support from some, and, possibly, aroused  suspicion of some others. Either way,  the initiative by Friends of Roadside Trees (FORT) would not been so widely ignored as was the case at Giridarsihini Layout.  The only question is :  how do we win over doubting Toms ?

Micro-loans could be an answer.  If we  can come up with a scheme to  help the poor -  street vendors, artisans, petty traders  with scope for improving their trade – FORT can hope to make an impact among poorer sections. Families with semi-educated youth could do with guidance and initial  funding to train them in livelihood skills , be it plumbing, electrical work, welding, repair of home appliances and other such services.  We are talking of youths, so poor or backward, that they find even govt. run industrial training centres beyond their means.  They come from families that lack a credit-worthy legal identity. The families that sustain their trade through private borrowings at  interest rate so high that they are permanently in debt.  Micro-financing could help free them from this debt trap.  Offer of loans at affordable interest would go a long way in changing lives.

FORT could learn from Mr Parthiban, a Salem banker.   If only Friends of  Roadside Trees could swing this, it can justifiably expect its  micro-funding beneficiaries to join  in promoting the green agenda. To start with, they can be persuaded to  plant a tree to mark every milestone in their lives . Our idea is to register Friends of Roadside Trees as a trust and set up a contributory fund. If we mobilize a hundred shareholders to chip in Rs.100 each, we would have funds enough to micro-loan at least ten street vendors. Those interested in taking this line of thought further are free to join a strategy session (11 a m till 1 p m) hosted by tree-lover and veteran journalist Mr Krishna Vattam at his Mysore Mail office in Lakshmipuram this Sunday(May 23).

Why have board exam at Class 8 ?

My neighbour’s daughter in Mysore, a student of St. Joseph School,  cleared her eighth std. exam this year with 88 percent marks.  The school management,  I gather,  wants her to pay  Rs.8,000 by way of donation to continue in the school. Karnataka school system entails  a board exam at the eighth std. level.  And private schools finds this a convenient provision to make money. Every student seeking admission to Class 9, even if  she be from the same school,  is deemed a fresh candidate,  liable to pay not just the stipulated tuition fees, but other charges,  notably, a ‘donation’, payable by new students.

The school people sent my neighbour’s daughter home with a transfer certificate.  She can’t move to Class 9  in her own school without  re-admission.  She,  however, has option to try another school.  Sadvidhya,  they found,  has a 92 percent cut-off percentage for fresh admissions to Class 9. My neighbour who doesn’t have the number can however seek admission under,  what  they call,  the ‘management quota’.

One wonders if the  board exam system  for Class 8 serves any purpose other than help private schools make more money.