The film ‘Cotton for My Shroud,’ a heart-rending story about cotton farmers of Vidarbha in Maharashtra (western state of India) is directed by Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena. The national award winning movie, made by Top Quark Films throws light on how cotton farming with Bt (Genetically modified) cotton has led to a spate of farmer suicides in recent times.  

Kavita Bahl

Kavita Bahl, co-director of the documentary, quit her thriving career of 7 years as a journalist at Indian Express to delve into the reasons behind the suicide of nearly 300,000  farmers over the last 16  years.  She felt there was greater need to provide Vidharba farmers a medium to share their angst, emotions and helplessness.  In her interview with Bhavani Prakash of Eco WALK the Talk (EWTT), Kavita shares the journey, challenges and emotional turmoil she underwent to bring out the movie straight from a despaired Vidharba Farmer’s heart.

EWTT: What prompted you to leave your career to become filmmakers?

KAVITA BAHL: We took to journalism for we wanted to work for the voice-less, face-less people who exist on the margins and get nothing more than lip-service from those who rule this nation. We started as journalists. I worked for ‘The Indian Express’ for seven years, while Nandan worked for television in what we used to call ‘our previous lives’. In 1996, we quit news and current affairs programming to focus on real issues.

Now, we work in the genres of documentary and poetry films. Our work spans the domains of ecology, livelihoods, development and human rights.

In 2006, the cotton farmers’ suicides shook us very badly. We could not sit and watch the drama unfold from our armchair vantage point. We decided to explore the reasons that had driven the farmers to the wall.

EWTT: The movie captures the poignant situation in Vidarbha – where farmers are forced to commit suicide to escape debt.What do you think is the awareness level nationwide about this issue?

KAVITA BAHL: The disturbing fact that 2,90,470 farmers have committed suicide in last 16  years (1995-2011), is not ‘news’ enough for the media. Unfortuntely, farmer suicides have been reduced to just another set of statistics. Not enough is either being reported or written about the agrarian crisis in the Indian media. The urban and rural divide runs deep here. Our films often evoke surprise from urban audiences who were hitherto unaware of the extent of crisis in the lives of the farmers in their country. If India lives in its villages, then the plight of the villages should not be brushed under the carpet by the media and the ruling classes.

EWTT:  Why do you think GM cotton has spread so rapidly in Vidarbha? Is there a danger of GM crops taking over agriculture in India? What needs to be done to prevent this from happening?

KAVITA BAHL:  In India, the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, Bt cotton is grown commercially. In last 10 years, the area under Bt cotton has touched almost 90% of the total area under cotton cultivation in India.

The sector is dominated by small and marginal farmers who are totally dependent on the government machinery for advice and seeds. And, in a scenario where all the local seed companies have been bought over by business corporations like Monsanto, traditional seeds have been edged out of the market and out of the reach of the farmers.

Farmers have always relied on their traditional knowledge and wisdom. Given a choice they would prefer to continue with traditional seeds which are hardy, can grow easily and are pest-resistent. Unlike the modern farming which is expensive and chemical intensive, this farming is inexpensive and farmer-friendly. In any case, when it has been proved that Bt seed does not increase the yield manifold as is touted by the luring advertisements, why would the farmer want to fall into the death trap of Bt?

While the pro-GM corporate lobby is strong, the anti-GM lobby in India is proving to be stronger. The people of India through various forums have indicated their resistance to GM crops and the government has been forced to put a moratorium on the GM brinjal or eggplant. However, people have to be vigilant and prevent any back-door entry by the pro-GM lobby as happened in the case of Bt cotton.

While the ongoing corporatisation and monopolisation of seed threatens seed sovereignty, it also poses a threat to  the bio-diversity rich countries like India.

The following video gives quick trailer of the movie.

Here is a synopsis of  ”Cotton For My Shroud” 

Since 1995, a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide – the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history. Most of them were cotton farmers from Vidarbha in Maharashtra.Once known for its fine cotton, Vidarbha is now called the ‘graveyard of farmers’.‘Cotton for my shroud’ tries to understand from a grass-roots perspective what is driving the cotton farmers to despair – is it a crisis of farm credit or are they victims of faulty paradigms of development?  The escalating cost of inputs like seed, fertiliser and pesticide has made farming unsustainable. In the summer, the lack of resources or institutional credit for sowing the fields drives poor farmers to end their lives. In the winter, the depressed rates of cotton become the proverbial last straw.While the state and the media label these deaths as suicide, the cotton fields of Vidarbha remain a mute witness to genocide.The film documents the diabolical designs of American multinationals like Monsanto to control our seed supply. A nation that does not have food security, cannot claim to be independent. And the ruling elite are again complicit in this second colonisation of India.The film was shot over two visits to the hinterlands of Vidarbha. Narrated in the first person, it gives us a window into the drama and despair that forms the warp and weft of life at Vidarbha.

EWTT: What were the reactions and responses from the villages you shot in and researched through?

KAVITA BAHL: It would have been impossible to tell their story truthfully, without the access the farmers of Vidarbha gave us. Almost all the people we met had similar experiences with the Bt honeytrap.

They felt betrayed by the government extension agencies that are supposed to guide the farmers, they feel violated by the multinational corporations that are poisoning their land with chemicals and genetically modified cotton seeds that do not live up to the promises and tall claims made by Monsanto. They have lost respect for the Fourth Estate for they feel that most of the media has been bought over by powerful politicians and multinationals.

There is a general feeling of despair and hopelessness in the villages. Most agricultural households find it difficult to sustain themselves, with the rising input costs and depressed rates of whatever they produce. The children of farmers do not want to take to farming in this scenario.

Thanks to the support extended by Vidarbha Jan-andolan Samiti, an NGO actively involved in advocacy on farmers’ issues, we could reach many villages and understand the finer nuances of this rapidly unfolding tragedy.

EWTT: How long did the film take to make?

KAVITA BAHL: It has taken us almost five-and-a-half years to complete this film.We started filming in June 2006. The second trip to Vidarbha was in November and December. We did some additional filming in 2007. Then came the speed-breaker.  We came back from Vidarbha quite depressed at the state of affairs. For months, we had nightmares. The wails of the widows and children echoed in our ears still. It was difficult to shake it off and get on with the edit. (“After all, its just another project”, our friends would exhort.)

We sat on the footage for two years. But it was difficult to bury the ghosts and sweep the film under the carpet, as if nothing had ever goaded us to visit Vidarbha. We were not comfortable with canning the film. We owed a lot to the people who had opened their hearts and hearths to two outsiders, in their moment of grief. We could not betray their trust. We started editing the film. As we previewed and digitised the footage, we re-lived the horror that had unfolded before our eyes in 2006.

We finished the edit in 2011. The first public screening was at Cinemax Versova during the Mumbai Film Festival (October 15, 2011). In October 2011, the film won the Gold for best script at the IDPA Awards. This year, it has been awarded the Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus) for Best Investigative Film at the 59th National Film Award

EWTT: What can the public do to support your movie, and to support farmers of Vidarbha?

KAVITA BAHL: We believe that a post film crowd-funding is also possible. The film is self-funded by the film-makers. If people think that it is a sincere effort towards highlighting the mounting crisis in the lives of cotton farmers, they can contribute by purchasing the DVD copies of the film. These contributions shall go towards making language versions of the film. However, their responsibility does not end here. They should also screen the film and raise awareness about this issue.

We have been screening the film in film festivals, academic institutions, public forums. We invited the members of the Parliament to a special screening at the Constitution Club earlier this year. Various colleges in Delhi University have invited us to screen the film and talk to the students.

Those who are interested in doing so can write to us here.

We believe that ultimately the solution lies with the people and not the government alone. In the spirit of true democracy, the citizens’ voice should be heard and acted upon. The constitution of India puts “We the People…” firmly in the driver’s seat.

We hope that one day – the voice of our farmers shall also be heard in the corridors of power. We hope that the media, activists and people of India stand in solidarity with the farmers and together we put an end to the blood-bath initiated by the policies of the Green Revolution. We hope that Monsanto will be asked to pack its bag and leave India. We hope to escape the scourge of Bt and Genetically-modified crops. We hope that that India will retain its seed freedom and independence.

EWTT: What are you planning to do next?

KAVITA BAHL: We are trying to raise contributions for making the Marathi and Hindi versions of the film to take it to the villages where we filmed in 2006. There is demand for Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Odiya, French & Spanish versions as well.

About the interviewer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT:   Nero’s Guests and Farmer Suicides in India

EWTT: Dr Vandana Shiva: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity andSustainable Development

EWTT:  India’s GM Bill: Anti-people, Anti-nature

EWTT: Go GM Free in Australia

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Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

It is a rare opportunity indeed to meet someone who deeply understands the connect between ourselves and the living planet, and is taking direct action in terms of mobilising people into planting millions of trees, whilst simultaneously giving the practical tools to profoundly change one’s own inner wellbeing.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder of Isha Foundation talks to us in Singapore recently (Video below) about Project Green Hands, the largest tree planting effort in India in the state of Tamil Nadu, and the work that’s being carried out to enable its progress. The project received the “Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar award,” the highest environmental award in India in 2010.

Sadhguru travels around the world spreading his message of peace and the need for ‘inner engineering’ or change – from global forums such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, World Peace Congress and United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, right to villages in the heart of rural India.

On Earth Day 2012 Sadhguru had said,

“How audacious that we can even think that we will allot a day for the earth! Both day and night happen only because of the revolutions of the earth. Our very body is an extract from this planet. Everything that we are is earth. For human beings who have forgotten that they have just temporarily come out of the womb of this earth and that they will one day be sucked back into this earth, for them, this day is a reminder that you are a part of this earth. If humanity has to live for a long time, you have to think like the earth, act like the earth and be the earth, because that is what you are. 

I am often asked by people, “Why is a spiritual leader, a yogi, planting trees?”  Why? Because trees are our closest relatives. What they exhale, we inhale; what we exhale, they inhale and keep our lives going. It is just like the outer part of our lung. You cannot ignore your body if you want to live. The planet is in no way different from that. What you call “my body” is just a piece of this planet.

The video interview:

Video link here

Here is the edited transcript for the above video interview with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: 

Bhavani Prakash:  Thank you Sadhguru, for speaking to us at EWTT, it’s a real honour for me to be here with you today. At EWTT, we raise awareness about environmental issues and also share stories of positive change.  Sadhguru, you have spread peace and joy to millions of people all over the world and have specially initiated Project Green Hands, which is the largest tree planting initiative in India in the state of Tamil Nadu, with the objective of planting 114 million trees that will raise the tree cover to 33% (Sadhguru: We are not anywhere near the number!)

Bhavani Prakash: Why and how did you start the Project Green Hands? What is the progress so far?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev:  In the year 1998, United Nations- certain agencies from the United Nations made a prediction that by 2025, 60% of Tamil Nadu will be a desert. I did not like it, I don’t like any prediction because predictions take into account only the cold facts, not human aspirations. What is beating in human heart is ignored completely. But I wanted to confirm, so I drove around Tamil Nadu to see if this is true. Then I came to the conclusion that they are wrong because in my estimate it wouldn’t go upto 2025, it would happen much faster.

Rivers which have been there for thousands of years have evaporated in the last twenty years; water table has sunk over thousand feet in many places and desertification is bound to happen very very rapidly. So I thought, what is the best thing to do? The simplest thing to do is, with global warming, temperature rise is happening. We made a calculation if there is increase in half a degree centrigrade of temperature, how many millions of tons of extra evaporation will happen to the oceans. If that many tons of water get evaporated where does it go? It all becomes cloud cover. One of the things that happens is the peninsula which is southern India, will receive excessive rain. When rain happens, without the necessary vegetative cover over it, without the green cover over it, the top soil will go away very quickly and the run off will create deserts very fast. It’s not ‘no rain’ which creates desert, it’s excessive rain without green top (that) will create. So the simple solution was to increase the green cover.

Tamil Nadu green cover on that day was 16.5%. National aspiration is 33%, so we made a barefoot calculation. If we need to make it 33% for the area of Tamil Nadu, we needed 114 million trees. So when I said 114 million trees, people thought I don’t know what the number is. We have over 62 million population. If all of us plant one tree, nurture it for 2 years and plant one more, we got the number. But such things never happen because efforts are never made in that direction. But people thought this was an impossible number.

So as a demonstration, I wanted to just give them the thrill of doing something which works.  The mountain where we are, we are at the foothills of a mountain, this particular hill which immediately behind ashram turns brown in the month of April and May. Because in this mountain, there is no single tree over 20 years of age – they have removed everything. The rest of the mountain is very thick rain forest, this particular hill is like this. Because there was illegal furniture industry taking away the timber we kind of stopped that process. It took a certain amount of social upheaval to stop it but we did. So then I devised a way of planting over this hill during rainy season.

It just took us about 22 to 23 days, about 4 to 5 thousand volunteers and I had to just provide them 2 meals a day and just had to create a song to keep the enthusiasm up and we planted up this hill.  Over 6 million seeds, we planted  in a certain way ensuring that the sprouting would be almost 100%. But because of the wildlife certain amount will die. This whole hill became green in 2 years time. Today, if you come and see, you will see in summer months, it will not turn brown.  Our temperatures have come by at least 3 degrees in summer because of this 22 days of work. So I gave them a demo that you don’t have to give up your life to do this. Making a mountain green, they thought they have to give up their life – so it was a kind of a demo and then they got enthusiastic.

Then I went about speaking to farmer groups and villages.  The simple message that I gave them is just this. As you sit here and breathe, what you exhale the trees are inhaling, what the trees exhale you are inhaling. This is a partnership. This is a relationship without which you cannot do. You can do without any other relationship but this relationship you cannot break or in other words, one half of your lung is hanging out there in the tree.  So it’s not a tree, its part of your breathing equipment. So this message went across to people. They emotionally felt that this is something they have to do because one part of the lungs is hanging out there in tree and have to take care of it. If they want to healthy, if they want to be happy, if they want to live well, if their children have to live well, this has to be done. This is something they understood.

Today, I think we have close to 17 million surviving trees which has  brought in almost over 7% green cover back to the state. This is the official figure. The google maps say it’s much more. So a big movement started and many people started planting. The awareness that this has to happen has almost reached the whole population. The media and people came out in big numbers. The call for green hands planting this year – this is our 30^th year – I told them you have to plant 30 lakh trees, that is 3 million trees, but people came back with a plan and said they will plant 6 million trees. So I said fine. This year they are planting 6 million trees, so about 1,100 nursery across the state in private lands and donated lands, no government help. Planting is not happening in government land – all on private land. We convinced the farmer that he has to convert 10% of his farming land into trees. More food should come out of trees than crops. Right now the proportion is disproportionate so that’s what we are working towards.

Bhavani Prakash:  In another interview, you had said that you spent a lot of time, many years, to work on planting trees in people’s minds…..

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: Yes, that is the most difficult terrain (laughs).

Bhavani Prakash: ….. before you got them to plant trees in soil.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: Planting trees in the soil is easy because soil likes trees and trees like soil (laughs). But planting trees in people’s minds was the big job. The first six years that’s all we did – planting trees in people’s minds. But now that it’s rooted in people’s minds,  it’ll happen on the land quite effortlessly as six million trees in not a small number.

Bhavani Prakash: How did you do that? How did you engage with communities and also what do you see the impact now on these communities?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: As I said, it became an experiential process, people understood that their existence is not separate from the trees. We put it across in an experiential way through skits, through plays, through songs, through videos and celebrities coming and talking about it. We organised whole events across Tamil Nadu, so it became clear to people, ordinary people, village people, people who are everyday struggling for their livelihood. These are the people who did it, it’s not some big corporation or some other great sponsorship, it’s ordinary people on the street.

Bhavani Prakash: One question that is asked about tree planting initiatives is the choice of trees and the long term maintenance of the trees. So how does the program ensure this?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: The choice of trees in not our choice, its indigenous trees. We have chosen 108 indigenous trees – only trees which are local. We don’t bring anything from outside.  The survival rate is because we don’t allow anybody to plant more than 2 trees. 2 children will plant one tree in partnership. So right now, we have taken up this in the schools is a big way, where 2 children in partnership will grow one tree – which is doable. If you make a person plant a hundred trees or a thousand trees, invariably he is not going to take care of it unless he has resources to do it. But 2 trees is something that he will take care of,  so generally give them 3 and say you must plant 2 and encourage one more person to plant one.  So this has set forth a whole culture today. You will see in Tamil Nadu in weddings people are giving away saplings instead of coconut.  People are coming and taking from us, which is a significant change. How many of this (the) wedding guest will actually plant? The thing is we don’t just give it away, we are also kind of encouraging as to how to plant, what to do and things. Even if they don’t, just the shift in culture from giving a coconut or a fruit or something else, they have shifted to give a live sapling. When a grown plant is given to you, you can’t just throw it like this and go. There is a certain involvement in that and plantings happen. So we are also making sure that they receive that and if they say ‘I don’t know where to plant,’ we take it and plant it for them.

Bhavani Prakash: We spend money in so many frivolous ways, and as you mentioned, in unwanted gifts for various occasions such as festivals and birthdays and anniversaries. How can we encourage our friends and families (to plant trees instead)?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev : You must do it. It’s very, very important, that sensible and meaningful gifts are given, not frivolous and meaningless gifts. So we have set up a website which says “Give Isha.”  So through giveisha.org/pgh people can (donate) either for their own birthday or friend’s birthday or children’s birthday or other occasions.

Bhavani Prakash: Apart from the scientific importance of trees which are important for combating climate change, recycling air and water…..

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: No, no, we are not combating climate change -yes, that will be a consequence. We plant trees because we understand it’s deeply, deeply connected with our lives, so the science of breath for one and in many other ways is connected. So the relationship is far more than just its utility, it’s life. Without our life they can survive, without their life we cannot survive.

And as you know in the past, most people got enlightened under a tree so we are also building infrastructure for your enlightenment.  You better plant one now, just in case you are planning to get enlightened. At least you must have a decent tree to sit under. Otherwise nobody will believe….

Bhavani Prakash: I’ll do a Bodhi tree then. (Laughs)

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: (laughs) If you got enlightened in your bedroom, nobody will believe you. At least you must be sitting under a tree. (Laughs) 

Bhavani Prakash:  In Asia and in most ancient cultures of the world, we grew up with a feeling of reverence for nature and mother earth and that’s fast disappearing in this new age on consumerism and greed, fuelled by rapid economic growth. How can we regain the emotional connect, that love and respect for the earth?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: It has to be brought forth in children, in the education systems. We are looking at the planet as a commodity.  We are not looking at it as a source of our life, which is a serious, serious mistake and an extremely crass way of existence. So, if you look at your mother as a delivery system for you, it’s a very gross way of existence. If you look at the planet as commodity, it’s a very gross way of existence. It’s time this is conveyed to the children of the planet because they are the future generations and if that has it happen, then this generation has to get it too first. It has to spread the message it’s very, very important.

Bhavani Prakash: If we continue business as usual it is estimated that by end of this century …

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: A century…you think it will last that long? (laughs)

Bhavani Prakash: (laughs and continues)…it’s expected that the planet will become warmer by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius …

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: Singapore won’t exist (then) (laughs)

Bhavani Prakash: What action needs to be taken urgently by every sector of society – by individuals, organisations, communities, policy makers? What action needs to be taken to prevent catastrophic consequences? Can we avert calamity? Is it inevitable? Do we have enough time to act?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: One thing is (that) the way we consume the planet has to change. You can’t stop it.  It has to change for which breakthrough technologies need to happen. Another important thing is and one of the most immediate things is to plant trees. Particularly planting trees is effective only up to 33 degrees from the equator, north and south. But south of the equator there isn’t much land to plant, expect Africa and certain parts of America. Nowhere else there is land, but in the north, there is plenty of land. So southern India or large segment of India falls into that, Singapore in that range and many other countries are there. Upto 33 degrees from the equator is the most effective place to plant trees.  If you plant it in temperate climates, it will not contribute in a very big way to the climate change process. But maximum impact happens here so that is where we need to plant. These lands which are within 33 degrees on either side of the equator, this is where we must plant maximum trees. Because this where it makes the difference.

This is an immediate remedy or (rather) it’s not a  remedy, it’s a small correction. But if we don’t even make this small correction then (with) other things such as technological breakthroughs, nobody can predict the time. It may happen this year or it may happen a century later. We don’t know when it will happen. We definitely need to invest in that direction but there is no guarantee as to when it will happen. So planting trees is something we can do and see that it happens and the impact is immediately visible. Consuming less in so many ways has to be done, technologies have to be improved but those things will not happen immediately. They can take time.

Bhavani Prakash:  I suppose we must also conserve what we have?  We are losing so much forest within this tropical belt….

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: That’s what I said. You cannot reduce consumption without technological advancement, it will not happen. You can only talk about it. It’s not going to happen, because you cannot curtail human aspirations. But you can curtail human population. The tree population should increase, human population has to come down.  We have bred irresponsibly.

In the last 100 years i.e., in the beginning of the century we were just 1.5 billion. Today we are 7 billion plus. United Nations is making predictions that by 2050 we will be 9.6 billion people. 9.6 billion people means we will have to live with 40% less resource than what we are enjoying now. When I say resource, I am not talking about oil or gold or something. I am talking about food that you eat, water that you drink and air that you breathe.  This is going to be serious problem. So 9.6 billion people in another 40 years, not even 40, in 36 years,  is a dangerous bomb sitting in front of us. Either we curtail this consciously or Nature is going to do it to us in a very cruel manner.  If we do it consciously we can call ourselves human beings. If Nature does it us, we are just creatures on this planet.

Bhavani Prakash: Sadhguru, what is true happiness and joy…..?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev:  No, no this is not ecological. (Smiles)

Bhavani Prakash: (Smiles) No, I am going to link it…

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev:  How can you sit on a tree and be happy? You have to be a monkey. (Laughs)

Bhavani Prakash: How can we connect this notion of individual happiness and joy to the wellbeing of all fellow human beings, the wellbeing of all species on this planet, the health of all ecosystems?

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: Don’t worry about the happiness of other beings, if you keep this one being happy (pointing to himself), no really…. If you are in a certain state of pleasantness within you, you will be pleasant to everything around you, invariably isn’t it?  When you are happy, are you not nice to people around you? But when you are unhappy are you very nice?   So people are too concerned about fixing the world. No, you fix this (pointing to himself), if this is feeling pleasant, it will naturally be pleasant to everything. So the problem is always – we want to fix the world and then fix this (oneself). It won’t happen, it’s only going to be talk.

Bhavani Prakash: Finally, there is saying that goes like this:  ”Hope without action is just wishful thinking.” Conversely, action without hope is impossible to sustain. So how can those who are really passionate about doing better for the world, encourage others to take action, impactful action, without losing hope.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: The thing is, your action should not be based on hope. Your action should be based on your clarity of vision. You know this needs to be done, so you do it. Is it going to happen or not going to happen, that’s not your business. Your business is that you did everything possible that needs to be done. Is it going to happen or is it not going to happen? If you calculate that now,  you will give it up tomorrow morning.

That’s not necessary. (Whether) It is going to happen or not going to happen is subject to many things, but did you do what you could do or not,  is the basic thing. So every human being has to look at this. “Oh it’s ok, if I plant a tree, is the world going to change?” Whether it changes or not, it’s just that out your concern you have done everything that you can do. You have not left anything undone. Always this is so in one’s life. In every human being’s life,  if you do not do what you cannot do, that’s not the issue. If you do not what you can do, that’s a disastrous life. So my wish is that no human being should become a disaster.  Every human being should do what he can do. What he cannot do….nobody can do what he cannot do. (laughs)

Bhavani Prakash:  Thank you Sadhguru for your wonderful words of wisdom and guidance.

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If you wish to plant a tree via Project Green Hands (PGH) : Donate via www.giveisha.org/pgh
Visit Project Green Hands‘ website and join PGH on Facebook

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Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: World Environment Day 2012: Support Project Green Hands

About the interviewer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

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Video link here

Vandana Shiva, the well known anti-GMO activist is one of the co-authors of the newly released report entitled: The GMO Emperor has no clothes describing the failed promise of GM foods and how it promotes food insecurity, superweeds and the use of pesticides.

The report which can be downloaded here, is co-ordinated by Navdanya and Navdanya International, The International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, with the participation of The Center for Food Safety (CFS).

John Vidal from the Guardian writes:

Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of “superweeds”, according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.

The report claims that hunger has reached “epic proportions” since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM “traits” have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale.

Most worrisome, say the authors of the Global Citizens’ Report on the State of GMOs, is the greatly increased use of synthetic chemicals, used to control pests despite biotech companies’ justification that GM-engineered crops would reduce insecticide use.

Read the rest of the article here

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: Dr Vandana Shiva’s Sydney Peace Prize Lecture: Time to End War on Earth

EWTT: Vandana Shiva: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable Living

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P Sainath

The documentary directed by Deepa Bhatia, “Nero’s Guests” is a story about India’s farmer suicides as unravelled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper.

Nero was an ancient Roman emperor who used to conduct one of the biggest parties ancient Rome had ever seen. And for the guests to enjoy the beautiful garden, Nero brought several prisoners at night and burnt them alive for illumination.

The documentary compares these activities of Nero with the ruling classes of India who pursue business friendly policies while cruelly neglecting the farmers and the poor. The documentary has shown the pathetic conditions of the families who are forced to commit suicide due to the debt and humiliation caused by harmful policies pursued by the Government in the interests of the corporates in India and those of rich countries like the US and in Europe.

While it took the Finance Minister less than 2 hours to rush to Dalal Street and console the “weeping millionaires” when the Sensex plunged a few years ago, it took 10 years for the Prime Minister to pay a visit to the family of the farmers who had committed suicide.  More than 2.5 lakhs (250,000) farmers have committed suicides in the last 10 years. At the same time the government of India has given more than 2 lakh crores (US$44bn) “incentives” to corporates in the last 2 years.

The mainstream media has completely neglected this and even created a uproar supporting corporate interests when 50,000 crores (US$11bn) debt relief was suggested by the Government at the pressure of many farmers’ movements. (Even this is not yet implemented at the ground level as desired and does not take care of the farmers who are at the mercy of cruel local money lenders). A huge population in India is still engaged in agriculture (above 50%), the contribution to GDP of which has declined from 52% to 15% in the last 20 years.

What shocks Sainath is not Nero’s cruelty, but the indifference of Nero’s guests. In all his lectures, Sainath specifically points out that there have been numerous cruel rulers like Nero over the last several centuries, in fact more cruel, but what bothered him the most was the identity of Nero’s guests, people who feasted on fruits, meat and exotic wine while around them human beings were being set on fire. Sainath says that we, the civilian population, must choose whether we want to be Nero’s guests or not, whether we also want to keep silent by ignoring the cruel injustices meted out to farmers and the poor and enjoy the benefits at the cost of the suffering of a huge population of this country.

This documentary has revealed before us how the economic policies in the last 15 years, have resulted in vast inequalities between the rich and the poor by providing a jobless growth (where job creations benefitted a very minor section of the population). We have all been hearing only one side – that of “Shining India” in all the mass media, but not the other side of “Poor India” – with suffers with hunger and poverty comparable to those of many under developed African countries.

Thanks to IT/ITES Screening of the documentary in Bangalore, India for the text extract, and Purvi Vyas for bringing the movie to our attention.

Further links you may be interested in:

1. P. Sainath in a lecture on Globalising Inequality at The Centre for Social and Environmental Justice, Washington State University, Vancouver

2. Book by P Sainath: Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts 

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Jason Taylor

Jason Taylor is a London based documentary filmmaker, who has over the past decade been commissioned by several international agencies such as UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNDP, SCF, Action Aid, Concern Worldwide, and IDRC Canada. The Source Project is a series of short videos and imagery that emanate from his strong desire to break away from ‘institutionalised’ media representation of issues, and to reflect in a dignified and compassionate way the realities concerning farmers and our food system.

THE SOURCE PROJECT

By Jason Taylor

I call my work on agriculture “The Source Project.”

The farmers, the real farmers of the world are the source of all knowledge – knowledge of seeds, knowledge of soil, knowledge of the seasons, knowledge of our interdependence and reverence for other species, knowledge of the cyclical loop in which all comes from and returns to the earth.

It is their knowledge that I want to show to the majority of people who have become absolutely disconnected from the source of our food  – not the controlled knowledge of large corporations with their policies so far removed from the realities at ground level.

After ten years of working as a photographer and filmmaker in what is fashionably known as ‘development’, I have finally come to the realisation that much of what I was involved in was little more than ‘managed poverty.’  I started to realise that I was becoming a part of that system and as I looked around me and interacted with media, development, photographers and filmmakers, began to understand that it is an industry like any other. I began to question the work I was doing and the absolute disconnect between those who commissioned me and those I was there to document.

My work is all about visual documentation; documentation in a way that I hope brings out the complexities of an issue in a dignified and compassionate way. I want it to create a softer entry point into a world very much removed and foreign to the people who watch them, while leaving space for people to question and explore deeper.

The Issue

There is a definite agenda out there and it’s all linked to GDP growth and little else. The people working in these organisations seem to have once experienced living in the field, when they were studying but now have fallen into a semi- academic middle class existence, more worried about their position within the organisation than the issues they were being paid to fix.

Agriculture is central to everything, our health, environment, resources, culture, work and security. It is the essence of life. Over the coming decade, we will experience the most fundamental change to these systems and our future security. It is little more than ecocide and in a few years time, just a few aggressive transnational corporations will control life. But the media keep us ignorant and very successfully disconnect us from the realities of the so-called globalisation. We are being lied to and brainwashed into thinking that money and technology are the only solutions. They are not and never will be. The problem with the solutions to our crisis is that the majority of our populations must be empowered and become part of the complex mechanism, this does not fit the model of a corporate dominated and controlled future. If we do not act now, we will lose more than ten thousand years of agricultural progress along with a biosphere and ecosystem that is life.

When someone asks me what my future plans are, I have to confess that I don’t really know where all this is going.  All I can say is that I felt I needed to change and begin doing something to re-connect to what we are about to lose. This is all very much work in progress.

I just want to keep going. I want to be partnering with organisations that have impact. And yes of course, all this is not possible without funding- at least to cover costs.  But equally important is that we need to come together and begin to produce films and communicate effectively. It is amazing how much of disconnect there is between the media and these fundamental issues.

Here are some of my videos for “The Source Project”

VIDEO 1 Natabar represents the essence of “The Source Project.” He lives absolutely true to his cause, is totally unfunded and driven by nothing more than a need to protect his community, his environment and his country’s seed heritage. Natabar continues to find, save and share his indigenous rice seed with local farmers. To date he has managed to re-introduce over 350 varieties.

natabar sarangi – the source from jason taylor on Vimeo.

VIDEO 2 We just managed to get an interview with Devinder Sharma before heading south. Sharma is a well respected food and trade policy analyst in India. We wanted to try and get some sound bites from him to communicate the key issues surrounding the first and second green revolution. These are extremely complex issues and much editing took place, but feel we have managed to compress it into something a little more digestible.

Not a very Green Revolution from jason taylor on Vimeo.

VIDEO 3: Upendra lives with his family in a remote area of northern Orissa. While riding on a bike for another project, I noticed families sitting in the mid-day sun smashing what looked like rocks with hammers. My friend told me that they were breaking the soil, soil that had become so lifeless and dry due to the use of chemicals that without adopting these desperate measures, it would be impossible to farm. Farmers like Upendra are beginning to re-introduce worm culture(vermi-culture) that has been used in sustainable, organic agriculture for thousands of years.

Upendra has Worms from jason taylor on Vimeo.

VIDEO 4: I had gone all out to make a feature length documentary about the global agricultural crisis, but was on my own and had little understanding on how to get the funding and then build it. This short film was meant to be a trailer for a funding pitch. There were just too many seasoned film makers lining up. I didn’t get chosen, but I’m happy to share it with you now.

Agriculture has become Agribusiness and more than a billion farmers’ livelihoods and environments are now being threatened worldwide, from Europe to Uruguay. This film is one minute with one of the millions of farmers who truly understand sustainable agriculture. This is The Source.

the source from jason taylor on Vimeo.

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About our Guest Writer

JASON TAYLOR is a London based filmmaker and is Founder of “The Source Project”  The websites are  at TheSourceFilm.org and Occurrent.org and . He can be contacted at nomad_is@yahoo.co.uk

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Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: Vandana Shiva: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable Living

EWTT: UN Report: Ecological Farming Can Feed The World

EWTT: State of the World Report 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet

EWTT: Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi: One Farmer’s Crusade to save Indigenous Seeds

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Dr Vandana Shiva needs little introduction as a prominent environmental, social justice and anti-GM activist.  In 2010, she received the Sydney Peace Prize and was named by Guardian UK in March 2011 as one of the top 100 women in the world.

In the following interview, she explains the work done at the organisation she founded in 1987 – Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm and Bija Vidyapeeth, the research and training arm. She reiterates that ecological farming is  pro-peace, pro- biodiversity, pro-culture and pro-livelihood for the poor.

Dr Vandana Shiva

She spoke to us recently during “Grandmother’s University” at Navdanya, Dehradun, India.  The three day course was intended to celebrate Traditional knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable livelihoods in an era of globalisation where these are coming under increasing pressure. Not only is this traditional knowledge disappearing, knowledge as a commons is being appropriated and patented by corporations to be sold for abnormal profit.

The participants of the course interacted with the Garhwali women of the Himalayan hills, who had travelled far to teach us some of their wisdom.

The wisdom of grandmothers is in Dr Shiva’s words, “our capacity to love, unconditionally. In our society of competition, of insecurity and fear, that steadiness of love and compassion is brought to the next generation. Just because they are grandmothers, they have a long view. It’s called sustainability in today’s jargon. It’s really a thinking about future generations – not just of me, myself, today.”

Dr Shiva answers here questions about the myth of GM, how to feed cities, the shadows of growth and development, and the role of civil society.

Video link here

The importance of saving seeds:

Seed list at Navdanya

We visited the seed bank within Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm, which distributes valuable traditional seeds to farmers.  By interacting with the co-ordinators of Navdanya – Rukmini who oversees about 100 villages in the Garhwal region (Uttarakhand district, N. India), and Jumana who works with farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, which has the maximum number of suicides in the country due to the economic hardships caused by Bt Cotton; the importance of saving traditional seed varieties against the onslaught of hybrid and GM seeds became amply clear.

Preserving Biodiversity

Navdanya is now a network of seed keepers and organic producers across 16 states in India. It has helped set up 54 community seed banks across the country, and has trained half a million farmers in sustainable agriculture. It is also actively involved in reviving indigenous knowledge, creating awareness about the problems of GM foods and the rights of people against biopiracy in the face of globalisation and climate change.

Here’s a recording in part, of a session by Dr Vandana Shiva at Navdanya, where she clearly explains four kinds of seeds – open pollination, green revolution varieties, hybrid varieties and GM seeds. This distinction is fundamentally important to understand the arguments against genetic engineering.  She also describes how the cost of GM seeds and pesticide use soar astronomically, which are major factors behind the indebtedness and consequent suicide of farmers.   (Kindly excuse the poor lighting conditions in the room, which is more than made up by Dr Shiva’s articulate discourse)

Video link here

About the Writer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com. She is passionate about the role of individuals and communities in bringing about the much needed change we need to see in the world.  She was an economist in her previous avatar, and is now an environmental and social justice activist using social media as well as offline community participation in her advocacy of a greener, fairer and happier planet. She writes and conducts talks and workshops on sustainability and can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

Further links you may be interested in: