Project Brahma
Ideas for a better India
Bhils of Central India and the mythical story of why they cannot farm
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Bhil children from MP
This is a mythological story of the Bhil tribe that is settled in parts of Central India, primarily in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra,and Rajasthan. The Bhils live in a highly arid and drought-prone part of India. Thus, farming cannot be their primary occupation. Traditionally, they have been hunter-gatherers and engage in animal husbandry. The Bhils are quite economically backward. I found this story interesting because it is being passed on through generations in the Bhil community, the elders explaining to the new generation why they are so poor and why they cannot engage in farming. This story also illustrates the importance of animals, especially domesticated animals, in helping tribal people achieve prosperity.
As the story goes, once Parvati and Lord Shiva were sitting in their abode in the Himalayas having a discussion about the mortal world. Suddenly, Parvati realized that her brothers were coming to meet her. Parvati greeted her brothers with great joy and spent some time chatting with them. When the time for them to leave came, she asked Lord Shiva to give them a parting gift. Lord Shiva said, “I’m just an Aghori Sadhu! I dont have any material possession to give as gift to your brothers. I’m sorry”. Hearing this, the brothers felt sad and left. But Parvati insisted and Lord Shiva, unknown to the brothers, placed a silver pot in their way. But the brothers failed to notice the pot and walked away.
Parvati felt sad. She thought, “If my brothers failed to notice a gift from God, how will they achieve any success in their life?”. She went to Lord Shiva again and asked him to give her brothers a valuable gift that can help them learn and achieve success. Lord Shiva said, “Alright! I will give your brothers my precious bull (Nandi).”
Nandi Bull
Parvati was happy. She said to her brothers, “Oh my dear brothers! Take good care of this bull and you will become rich and prosperous.” The brothers were very happy and took the bull to their home.
However, after reaching home, the brothers started to get very impatient. They thought that since Parvati asked them to take care of Nandi, there must be something valuable in it. One of them suggested that they kill the bull and see if there’s any treasure inside. Another brother resisted but in the end, all of them became greedy and agreed to kill the bull.
When Parvati heard that Nandi had been killed by her brothers, she grew very angry. She confronted them and said, “You fools! Nandi was the most powerful and the most sacred bull in all the three worlds. You could have used him for tilling your barren land and for farming, however, you gave up this opportunity and instead killed him.” So she cursed her brothers – who belonged to the Bhil community – and their descendants that they will never be able to farm again. And so the story goes for why the Bhils do not (cannot) farm on their lands.
Such stories also pass on an important lesson of respect towards the natural world to the younger generation.
PS: On a lighter note, a little bit of irrigation and proper groundwater management practices may help some bit in lifting Parvati’s curse 
Education for the masses
0According the 2011 Census, India’s population is 1.2 billion – one sixth of the world’s humanity. By 2050, India’s population will be 1.6 billion, surpassing that of China. Keeping these 1.6 billion people happy is a monumental challenge. If the unemployment rate in 2050 remains the same as today – at 10% – there will be 160 million unemployed people in India. That is more than the current population of Russia! To satisfy this ocean of humanity, India will have to not only create jobs in current sectors of the economy but also create new sectors, allow for development and propagation of new ideas and create social change that trickles down to the bottom of the pyramid. Now, people can throw in all sort of indices, talk about the rising GDP of India and increasing market capitalization to suggest that India is progressing. But all of this is unsustainable if the society becomes chaotic. The big question before the country is – how do we maintain peace and stability in the country 50 years from now?
Educating the adult population
The most fundamental solution to this conundrum is education for the masses. Successive governments in India have recognized this problem and that is why we have a National Literacy Mission and Sarvya Shiksha Abhiyan in place since 1988 and 2001 respectively. The Sarvya Shiksha Abhiyan is targeted towards primary education (6-14 age group) and intends to get the ~200 million children in India to go to some sort of a school. The aim of the NLM program is to impart functional literacy to all non-literate persons in 15-35 age group, where “functional literacy” is a key word. Functional literacy means being able to read, write and calculate and being aware of the civic society around. With this definition and through these initiatives, functional literacy in India has reached up to 74% – 65% for females and 82% for males – from 12% in 1947. NLM claims that 120 million people have been made literate since the program started. Innovative concepts like Ekal Vidyalayhave also contributed to children going to schools, especially in rural parts of India.
However, the question is, are these efforts sufficient? Despite spectacular progresses, India still has the largest population of illiterates in the world. Estimates suggest that the rate of growth of literacy is sluggish and that if the same rate continues, India will take another half a century to be fully functionally literate. Again, remember that all these statistics talk only about functional literacy. In a survey of 16,000 villages, an NGO found that 60% of the school going children were unable to perform simple division. The dropout rates even in primary school are high – around 20%. were Despite obtaining school-level education, studies indicate that more than 80% of the children do not go on to attend college. Of those that attend college, over 70% are unemployable. It is no surprise that Indian students perform poorly in nearly all international indicators of education quality.
In a few decades, the competition for resources in India will start getting more acute. There will arise individuals who will begin to take advantage of peoples’ pains and use them for electoral/monetary gains. Not that such individuals dont exist now, but the conflict will only grow in the coming decades. What we’d need is enlightened leaders – not just one or two but in hundreds of thousands. We’ll need leaders with vision and zeal. Creating such leaders is rarely possible without good education. So while the goals of the Sarvya Shiksha Abhiyan and NLM are noble and should be continued, it is absolutely important to create systems where the leaders of tomorrow will thrive and grow. We need an education system that not only educates the masses but also elevates the masses.
Genetically modified plants and agrobiodiversity
03 weeks ago
by shwetank
in Environment
There is lot of buzz that is going on whether genetically modified plants (GMOs) should be given clearance or not. There are different points in favor and against this issue. Issues like safety for human and animal consumption, seed security of our farmers, adverse effects on land fertility are some of the most prominent issues which get headlines of all major newspapers and magazines. Another harmful effect of GMOs is loss of agricultural biodiversity. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, has already warned the world for the loss of agricultural biodiversity. According to their reports some 75 percent of plant genetic diversity has been lost since 1900 as a result of excessive cultivation of genetically uniform, mass-produced crop varieties. GMO plants are derived from genetic modifications of a specific variety of a plant which produce best phenotypes in terms of either yield or quality. So effectively, all the plants of a field where GMOs are grown are the product of a monoculture. In USA for soybean and maize, two most important crops, GM plants accounts for 93 and 52 percent of total cultivation, respectively. In a country like India, where government has limited control over the distribution of crops on agricultural land, uncontrolled cultivation of GM rice or wheat varieties could lead to a catastrophe. The scenario will even be more serious in case of plants which are the major source of food for the country. For example, a rampant use of GMO rice will result in extinction of many of the native varieties. Imagine a situation where GMO rice is being cultivated on 60% of our rice cultivating areas. Pathogens can always evolve and attack GM plant variety and destroy the produce for that year. This will bring down our economy on its knees.
World map of GMO production (2005). US, Canada, Brazil, China and Argentina produced 95% of world's GMO crops.
I once got an opportunity to ask this question to a top official from Monsanto. In his presentation he had shown the rosy picture how farmers in Gujarat are being benefited by GMO cotton and tried to make a case that India should give clearance to GMO rice. I asked him that if a situation arises that a pathogen has evolved against which your rice variety is very susceptible, then what is the minimum time in which we can provide a new set of seed of a resistant rice variety to our market. He said it can take minimum 6 months to flood the market with such new seed variety. That means it will take minimum 10-12 month that the next rice produce will reach to the market. The question is what will happen in these 10-12 months how will our government feed its citizens.
The protection of agricultural biodiversity is another very important point that our law makers and scientist have to ensure before giving clearance to the GMO plants which provide basic food to our country.
First published on Biodiversity of India
Ecology for Children – an experiment in environmental storytelling
03 weeks ago
India has a rich cultural tradition extending back over three millenia. Given the multitude of species found in the nook and corners of the country, the Indian cultural tradition has a heavy dose of biodiversity deeply embedded in it. Examples of such associations abound – from Lord Ganesha having a mouse as his vehicle to basil being worshipped as Goddess Tulsi. Such stories are being forgotten and lost in the fast-paced world of today. The problem is more acute for the tablet-totting, television-hooked generation of today. Question is, in what way can we effectively deliver these stories to the children of today?
Environmental storytelling
Copyright: Muriel Kakani
Muriel says on her website that “Love and empathic feelings are the greatest stimulant to the will…Feelings are more important than facts when talking about saving the Earth, preserving the environment and ecology.” I whole-heartedly agree with that approach. I also believe that feelings, coupled with knowledge, can be the most potent agent for change in this world!
For more information about Muriel’s work, check out the website and her project Ecology for Children.
What to expect on these pages…
03 weeks ago
by gm
in Philosophy
Nandan Nilekani, the philanthropic industrialist and politician, notes in his book Imagining India that the country exists in multiple centuries. In his epic six-part documentary The Story of India, British historian Michael Woods rightly points out that the Indian nation has kept an unbroken thread of its civilization for the past three thousand years. Today in the country, we see communities that live in high-rises and work in IT parks as well as communities like the Naga Sadhus that still live hundreds of centuries in the past. India is a land that contains an ocean of humanity within its borders.
And what an immense ocean it is! Arguably, only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, genetic and cultural diversity of the nation of India. The country houses 1.5 billion people (comprising almost a fifth of the world’s population) speaking 1652 languages and dialects, spread out over more than two thousand ethnicities and over every major religion. This immense cultural diversity is both a boon and a bane for our country. India has an astonishing demographic dividend where more than 50% of its population is below the age of 25 and more than 65% hovers below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan. On one hand, this means more productive hands, more ideas, more dynamism and more youthfulness in the country. But, if this massive human resource ends up not being utilized the right way, the burgeoning population may well spell disaster. In no more than 20-30 years, the problems such as poor infrastructure, water shortage, environmental degradation, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy may end up eating up the country from within.
Most of us (atleast most of us reading this post) may have a pretty good realization of this bleak scenario. Question is, how do we provide solutions? Solutions that are actually workable, which may actually end up creating change?
There are three steps to effecting any kind of a change, may it be in our lives or in the greater society. First, acknowledge that something is wrong. Second, get more educated about the problem. Third, work towards solving the problem. Each of these steps is significantly harder than the previous one. Most of us are on the first step. We have our jobs, our daily lives, our families and in such a scenario, acknowledging the problem is the easiest thing to do. Project Brahma is all about the second and the third steps. Through this blog and the accompanying websites, we hope to create awareness about various problems facing India and provide glimpses of solutions being effected around the country to solve these problems. Through these pages, you will soon be able to find opinions of our bloggers, articles on NGOs across India working on the ground and thoughts on how we can all work together to stem the effects of our burgeoning population.
Project Brahma will be focused on three issues – Education, Environment and Society – which have an impact on us in our everyday lives. We believe that education and environmental conservation are the biggest social challenges our nation faces right now and we need to deal with them on a war-footing. We also would like to reserve space for thoughts that reflect on society, the nature of an ideal society and ways and means to create such a system. We hope to pen down ideas that conform to these broad issues in the days to come.
With that said, I hope you will keep coming to our blog and giving us feedback on how we’re doing. I hope you will find something valuable in these pages to share and spread around!
