How Green is Green Revolution? Part I

Word green in old English means ‘to grow’. Color green has always been associated with prosperity, sustainability, hope, and nature. Color of many national flags has an inseparable green. At least a million web addresses have term green in their domain names. So much so, thoughts, sometimes are called green.
In India, for a considerable time and even now, term green has been seldom used without a ‘red-word'- called revolution. Together these two terms account for a Nobel Prize, one World Food Prize, two Prime Ministers, one agricultural minister, one leading research institution and two agricultural universities, two and a half states, countless flourishing fertilizer and pesticide companies. Nation’s empty stomachs are sated by the silos of food-grains entirely filled by the waves of green-revolution. There’s a new fourth version of iPhone on the shelf. Time goes by and after 50 or so odd and even years, India has unofficially launched green-revolution II.
We took 50 years to realize that Green Revolution I (sometimes it is fancy to add numeric adjectives in the rear, Tendulkar 10, Ronaldo 9, Jordan 23, and so on) also means just two and half states out of 29, hunger alleviation for just half of the nation, more than 200,000 farmer suicides, no one looking at more than half of nation’s land which is non-irrigated, high levels of toxicity in the ground water and poor land condition in two and half states, and recent plan to plant reverse osmosis units in entire Punjab! Scores of poor farmers falling into a Urea-DAP-SSP-Endosulfan-Thaili Wala Beej-Diesel-Debt-Poor production-Suicide trap, millions of families fleeing to cities for non-agricultural jobs, 40% of total farmers not willing to go for crop-cultivation and recent government projection that says 6-15% of country’s population will depend on agriculture are the subsidiary products of enchanted slogan ‘green-revolution’.

Surprisingly, green-revolution statistics didn’t correspond to the average increase in income of more than half of nation’s farmers. There’s employment guarantee in rural India. Revenue from fertilisers and pesticides when combined with the subsidy given to the owner companies will no doubt overwhelm the total income from farm of all the farmers in India. And it would almost be ten times the income of poor small and marginal farmers. There’s an extension system for agricultural information to be disseminated in villages. Total employees of government departments, organizations, government schemes, and central or state committees on ‘sustainable agriculture’, in my opinion, would outnumber poor farmers who understand ‘sustainable agriculture’ let alone envisioning it.

Yet, a dialog has to be made between this large ‘producer’ force and our ‘political; government/s. Sometimes,

I wonder, do we even need a dialog with a blind and deaf government which has to appoint a committee for every single thing in the country- child-labor, female foeticide, honor-killing, rapes, communal and regional unrest in all four corners and center of the nation, and fraud in a not-so-sportsmanlike games event?

I am home-sick!

Intellectual anomaly ridden with a false promise, not the fabricated one, but the unintended one; when mom used to be off home for the social protests of various sorts and promise to bring whatever you would ask and all you would get is a packet of maggi noodles and a sister equally anxious to eat it raw rather than frying it over a newly bought non-sticky frying pan, which Chachi would call fry-baan and would use to fry fraas-beans! An elder brother who was also a big brother, would probably sneak out a chance to beat the heck out of you over the dimmest mistakes in the mechanics problem from Nootan’s Physics; however, occasionally allowing you to read from his prized possession of 197 Raj comics- ranging from Dhruva to Nagraj to Doga. Dad would come home, often smelling of what he said- ‘I just had good time with friends’, would put his right hand in the shirt-pocket and I would grab all those toffees and sometimes fruits, like the best thing in the world. STD calls of a brother who people said you have to become like one day, but you only are just a look-alike not the think-alike person. You try to imitate his style of writing, his sense of dressing and gawp at his INR 600 Bata shoes as if trying to find your own image, only end up being his farthest close friends.

Looking back at those wondrous years or months or days, uneasiness crawls all the way into your brain, like little moths fiddling around your ear-flying over the lamppost under which you are working.
Mom’s protest suddenly became so political that they get on you nerve and sometimes you almost hate them. Dad’s ‘friend’ smell now comes from you whenever three or more of your friends meet in a Delhi or an Ahmedabad or a Chandigarh or even a Kota! Sister’s anxiety of eating that maggi packet raw turned into a marriage after which you find time hardly to talk to her for more than five minutes. The big brother shares the best of his times with you whenever you go to his place, you eat everything that comes into your mind like you would read every of his comics that would come to your hands! STD calls of other brother has turned into ISD ones and the image of his Bata shoes finds no mention in your thoughts now. Chachi call the beans outside her garden, French beans and fries them on a non-sticky frying pan!

Anomaly in the mirror- times elapsed and images changed, intellectually!

One World

It’s a weird world at certain dimensional specification of time and space. Haiti has no world at a time when we were discussing National Film Awards. Obama was trying to rebuff special interest group and we were contesting a controversial field hockey election, on which lies nothing but an ego.

A good friend once said, there should be integration of the works of people in different stratum of society. Revolutions should be for integration. Like many bearded journalists in this world, he went unheard. The term ‘integration’ has remained but a jargon for most of us. I tried integrating my efforts with the efforts of others in the sector and found it making wonders. What someone thinks or does is what I do or think and the world suddenly gets one more identity; and it is more important. It is not that person’s identity, nor is it my identity- it is that integrated identity. I desist use of word ‘we’ there. A shallow thought would belie the would-be-possible state of mind behind that refrain, so a deeper thought generated.

Ordinary people often quote ‘this is personal and that is professional’. Smart people often say ‘this is personal, professional, and social’. But extraordinary people say it is but spiritual. It is about the moment irrespective of sense it generates; be it planning for next round of official dialogues or writing your innate fears on your diary. It is not about the form of prayer you make, but it is about the prayer you make. It is about the spirit of your prayer, your bathroom secrets, and your work ethics. And unless we seek an integration of our professional, personal, social and spiritual cycles of breaths and blinks, ‘we’ won’t come into being.

I don’t say should, I say must. Let us integrate our own actions throughout the day and night. Let us all refine our actions to fit as one whole. It must be a big world and one world, where everything affects the elections of hockey board and everyone lends a hand to Haitian people to that ‘integrated self’. Where Obama is the award and films are but mirrors for us. My actions towards this should speak louder than these few words and my fears should not subdue my zeal.

Let us all accept our fears and integrate!

starting it in the morning

And one more day passes by; unheard of the pain, untouched by the foul air, and unwanted by the dreams within. There is a long night that one spends with 588 mL Vodka, 3 and 1/2 lemon, 21 85 mm Classic Milds, few oranges, few apples, and one FMCG 'namkeen'. Morning is a late affair and there, one spots the patches on face with edema and shouts at the image in mirror, but unheard just like the pain last day, it too meets same consequence. One doesn't (WANT TO) accept the image in there, but people/world see ONLY that. Have a happy living in the late morning. Dying by 7pm. Morbid at 11 pm. Dead by 3 am. Reincarnate at 9am.

Audacious by nature, restrained by 'living' in the world, timid by 'thinking' future, 'mortified' by choice. Ever wanted to break the shell? Ever wanted to live a reward, a passion, a thought? Ever lived any moment? Started feeling? One thinks of starting it all, as it is already "LATE IN THE MORNING".

The times, they ain't changing!

A very happy b'day to AB. Today, I went to one of the most destitute people I have ever seen. Sometimes life has so rude of turns on the most needy, that you are left with an awe of anger, frustration, helplessness, resolution to live for those people only. I just found one, or I shoud say I got a recharge for my well of hopes. There was no means of livelihood, which could make my incessant efforts to bring those people onto a common platform, fruitful. The hamlet was not the regular spot for any kind of scheme/project by any govt. organisation or non-govt. organisation. I wonder this is true since JL Nehru hoisted the tricolor at Red-Fort, for the first time.

Life has a remarkable absence of solace. Truce between the anxiety of an unsuccessful cropping season and a dying prospect of another in the offings is hard to notice.

Raising a voice for the most basic needs (ironically govt. calls these RIGHTS) is not the order of life here. Living under a frenzied air of uncertainty of life anymore, these people are striving under the sun, and just the sun. No water, no electricity, no roads - to nowhere, no skills, no brighter prospects, no...life.

I saw some of the most fearful faces, empty stomachs creating ear-exploding noise. Yes, this all and much more ado. All in the mighty Rajasthan. I pity on the rulers of this land who did make some of the strongest forts, fought some of the bravest battles, but forgot to move an inch on these ground. I pity more on the federal govt., which fails no notice myriad of our villages/hamlets in a situation like the village I met some of the poorest/helpless people of India.

My battle is now twofold. One, to get something done for the folks here; two, not to let any other village face the ruthlessness of the govt. functionary. I will raise my voice against every single misappropriation of rural India. I will try to make my actions more effective for the people of my India.

At Haldwani (Uttarakhand) Railway Station en route to nowhere!

A final stop, a place contradictorily so desirous, a pack of small barren footed smiling faces near a small mud pool due to last nights heavy downpour, nearby a goat that knows no destiny and eating all the thorny bushes around only to be packed in a 100 Rs./kg mutton packet.
A vehicle in the reverse gear. A crow defying norms, bathing in clear looking mud.
Dust on the bowl shaped bun-basket of a banzaran, people jumping their share of pole vault to home across the railway track that smells not of metal not of rust on the track but of the shit all over it. The airs here smell foul. Everything seems so filthy.
The uprooted houses nearby and the uprooted smiles that are hard to find anymore on these dust-colored faces.
One cannot uproot the desire of these people to live their share of life in the homes they built, they too wanted to raise their kids to rock the world one day, but I don’t hear the call. The demolition can not take their dreams to the ground and this has to be realized, but I just dream. As hapless and helpless as these people are.
The foul smells find their origin both human and in-human.
A bookstall and an array of man-less mountains all watch over these people. The books, not sure of giving them knowledge and the mountains, too small to shelter these people.
I loathe uneducated education and I love the mountains, I live on.
A wind, mad and blowing leeward, I don’t know searching whose face to fill it up with the cruel emotions it has seen for so many days and weeks that turned to don’t-know-how-many years, of course smelling shitty.
Three GRP persons in conversation with two IB officials, looking lustily at the only banzaran wearing, but a fake smile. Remarkable hormonal tuning.

They think banzaras don’t have homes, so they don’t have anything, no nothing. Getting a home is an impossible task, so banzaras deserve nothing, for that matter. They think because they are in IB.
And they do away with the banzaras because banzaras don’t have any home, so no place is theirs. They act because they are in GRP.
They will shape the heart and soul of my country or are they shaping it?
A lad shooing smaller kids away from the air-conditioned hall, under-construction. This is his place to hangout. His pvr. His pizza-hut. His café-coffee-day.
Under-construction.
May be some day, he will get to know these things, for now his knowledge is confined to the fact this construction has nothing to do with his demolished home, but soon he will realize getting a home would have shaped his dreams good, big.
I don’t think one needs big house to shape a big dream. I have seen no such thing till the time I shaped one for me.

Here doom some of the strongest dreams, here some formulate the greatest of the designs, only here, homes get wrecked and here, they build railway stations.
Here, some sell incense sticks, sandalwood and rose smelling, here, gets the shitty smells over all other things, here, the book sellers sell their life and here, no one bothers to get one.
Here, I think about you and here, I should think about the banzaran instead, the IB officials and the GRP men, the kids, the lad, the destroyed homes, the wretchedness of dreams, the awry smell, the books and my country. This is really a place that must be worth everything to me. But this is a place that is nothing to me, instead.

The echoes of this place are fascinating and these go unheard, in the times when people don’t hesitate to kill someone for the sake of their unsolicited rights, their demands for special reservations.
In the times when spaceships delay their landings not because the Earth has become dirtier a place to come back on but due to the technical faults.
In the times when temperature rising makes G-8 worry more than the perennial African hunger-illiteracy-AIDS-many more, more than these all.
In the times when people go to the US for academic goals and eventual pursuits and they promise to change. Change what? To whom? They don’t know.
In times when inheritance of loss is the greatest found and the pursuit of happyness is traveled. In the times when Rafa clays his name immortal. In the times when Presidential elections are a mess and when a chief minister rides on state run buses and admits truth fearful-dreadful truth.
In the times when Beatles are history and Dylan still serenades first-hand.
In the times when apparent is not seen and unfathomable is what one thinks.

The echoes go unheard! May be someone has just put the mute button on.

Mountains big, giant and like a destitute lovers’ un-reached love/s always in the sight but never reachable, mock the tin-roof of this forlorn place.

A final stop. A place so contradictorily desirous.

Infidel images.

On an awry day of September, coming back from what you can call an “exercise to go back in time”, I was inducted into the program after working for more than 5 months in it.
Not necessarily, things are always waste of time and efforts.
Sometimes, it is important to look back at you from today and knowing what kind of a person you were on a given date/time/situation in the past. I had to become familiarize the heckler to the work I was doing. It was an odd battle between the nastiest of hecklers around the world and me.
He asked me ‘are you lying’? To my consternation, I had no choice but to lie, I said “No”.
What are the things you want in life? It can’t be any vaguer than this, and I replied as vaguely as possible. Satisfaction from what I am doing is all that I want.
Even before he could ask me, “how”, I got the ball in court and asked- what are the ways through which I can derive satisfaction from what I am doing.
Malevolence couldn’t come any harsher than this- he said, you are the biggest wastage of time in the whole world. You don’t even know what you are doing, what kind of a person you are, what are the things that you want from life. Well, a pause, and he was all over me and I was helpless to death.
Okay, I got my answers. I want death from life. And by killing it, I will derive satisfaction from life. And that is what I am trying to do.
That was one of the scariest of answers I have ever made, on the other hand, the most beautiful answer of my life, so far.
I want death of an air of social discrimination. Not by a person of another, but to me social discrimination starts from a person and ends at her/him.
I don’t know what my needs are, thanks to a monetary society that taught me ways to count my cash flow, ways to earn money, spend it, and analyze the cost of living! To compensate for something I was extravagant on, I have credit cards in my pocket and to pay the bills of my internet connection, I pay a small part of my salary. Irony stays put, I don’t know if I have to spend time or money on something I like in the world. I spend money on it and it frustrates me. I spend time on it, and veer off to do something else. I discriminate among my needs. I murder some of my needs and settle for the next best. It jolts me enough to cover my cornea with a fine sheet of social discrimination that I will spread like a disease to my kiths, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my work, my world.
I, having wasted some of my most precious time constructing passionate dreams for something that I didn’t like- going for a PhD, that I hated the most, can tell you what it means to do something that you don’t like and what are the paltry benefits that you settle for.
Life’s ugliest moments come unfolding in front of me and attached are the ways I killed them. Though the ways weren’t the smartest, I did that by my own. To exist in the world, to make a false smile sometimes, to drop a dishonest tear, I lied many a times. Then, I wasted time on covering the untruth.
I don’t how long I will go like this or find any other way to veer off to. How much I will be able to gain from life. Do we have to necessarily gain something, know something? Can’t we just live and let live? Can we not play a stupid game of wants and needs and ways to make them fulfilled? Can’t we forget intelligent ways to make WMDs, can’t we just forget complexity and learn only basic math? Can’t we un-bribe our souls, not asking them to settle for something they don’t want? Can we not ask about anything as vague as life, death, satisfaction, happiness, grief, passion, failure, success, love, empathy, and novelty? Can’t we stop questioning? Can I not ask the honesty of an effort, but see what it does?
I want death of all the questions; I am killing them one at a time, and deriving satisfaction from it. I am going successful, but surely I am not living, because at the long battle between me and what apparently was my sub-conscious mind (the nastiest heckler), I wanted to do something else.
Though the heckler was now silent and not asking anything more about life, I know it for sure, some odd day in October, he will bounce back with a fleet of questions.
May be the next time he will kill me.
B