February 2009 Edition
The Annam festival
in Kerala shows how
Shree Padre
Thiruvananthapuram
IT was a little past midnight, but Lilly Bai was up and about. For the next few
hours she was busy making 15 dishes using yam. By noon she had taken her
preparations to Thriuvananthapuram to present them in a traditional
cookery competition at the Annam festival.
Lilly is a housewife at Parassala, a small town in Kerala. Like her, thousands
of middle-aged housewives are waking up to the merits of wholesome
traditional cooking. They are rediscovering the variety that used to exist but
has been all but forgotten because of the pressures of modern living.
Lilly's yam offering was a special effort. She has the enthusiasm that it takes."If I had enough time, I could have made another 10 dishes using yam," says
Lilly. But for most people putting an old-style meal together is just too laborious.It is a difficult choice to make when quicker, easier alternatives are available.
The Annam festival held in the last week of December, is the first event of
its kind. It is a brave attempt to bring focus to the growing concern over the
present food habits in Kerala and the deleterious effects they are having on
public health.
Among Indian states, Kerala has outstanding social indicators, but changes in
diet and lifestyle have saddled it with diabetes and hypertension cases several
times the national average.
Everyone seems to agree that Malayalis are eating wrong. They have gone
from fibre-rich freshly cooked home meals to processed foods. There is too
much sugar and fat in what they consume these days. Most families have no
inclination for the good old nutritious morning meal that was intended to keep
one going through the day.
[ “Let food be your medicine” ] [ Your personality, your diet ]
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Kashmiris want peace,development and an end to all conflict
Jehangir Rashid
Srinagar
PEOPLE came out and voted in record numbers
in the recent Assembly elections in Kashmir,
bringing a coalition of the National Conference
and the Congress to power. The new Chief
Minister, Omar Abdullah's own emphasis throughout
the campaign was on the need for development
and better governance. What are expectations
from him now that he is in office? What was
it that people saw in the National Conference's
agenda that they made it the single largest party?
We spoke to a cross-section of Kashmiris to understand what they hope for and how they would like their young chief minister to perform. While the flame of azadi continues to burn, the desire for peace and development appears to be stronger. People hope that not only will Omar Abdullah bring about development and good governance but that he will also try to bring permanent peace to the Valley, putting an end to a troubled past. Not only are people asking for hospitals and roads, but for the regional divide between Jammu and Kashmir to be bridged, for the idea of Kashmiriyat to take root once again. They would also like the new government to talk to the Hurriyat. Here are some excerpts from the interviews Civil Society did.
Read More...
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Umesh Anand
THE message coming out of the Annam festival held in Kerala and featured as our cover story is an important one. We are what we eat. The growing incidence of diabetes, hypertension and cancer is linked to diet. There is a need to bring back fibre rich meals and encourage biodiversity in our agriculture. It should worry us that even as the developed world is coming full circle and going organic, we in India are opting for corporate control of our farm sector and the shallow uniformity that comes from being entirely market driven. In the process we are abandoning the healthy multiplicity in grains and livestock that traditionally belongs to us.
The question is whether we can eat as our ancestors did especially since we don't live the way they used to? The challenge before the proponents of natural food is to make it practical in modern times. That is a true challenge because it requires a vision that goes beyond concern for ecology and environment. So is some processing okay so that the harried housewife of this day and age can give her family those healthy grains without being trapped in the kitchen all day? It is equally important to showcase nutritious food for the young --- and this will require a degree of messaging that most activists are perhaps incapable of. It is equally important to link farmers to consumers and standardise quality.
So, while the Annam festival is a great idea and serves the purpose of focussing on issues and bringing people together, it will have to go much beyond just this. In years to come, it will have to take the natural food movement forward in ways that make it easy to embrace. It will have to look for sustainability not only in the fields, but also in the market. If there is reason to be hopeful, it is because the time is right. A big responsibility also rests with governments to provide a framework which sponsors diversity, a lower dependence on chemicals and caution in the use of GM strains.
Read More...
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Bharat Dogra
Chitrakut (UP)
For as long as they can recall, Kol tribals in the
Chitrakut district of Uttar Pradesh, depended
on the forest for food and livelihood. The jungle
was an old and trusted friend yielding nutritious
mahua, anvla and chiraunji. Tribals could
earn money by selling such forest produce and by
plucking tendu leaves.
But since the last five years, this tried and tested
support system is crumbling. The tribals do not
know why. Yet, they speak in unambiguous terms
about the losses suffered by them.
"We have been eating mahua in different ways
during different seasons," explains Phulmatiya, a
Kol women. "It is extremely good for our health.
Till a few years ago, we were able to collect enough
mahua for our needs all the year through. We could
also sell mahua and earn some cash. But, during
the last season when we went to collect mahua, we
hardly got anything."
Phulmatiya comes from Mangawaan village of
Manikpur block in Chitrakut. Other villagers, too,
were keen to stop and talk despite the winter chill.
"Earlier, collection of tendu leaves was a significant
source of livelihood for us," says Prema,
another Kol woman. "But now such few leaves are
collected that our earnings have declined considerably.
Some of the leaves we pluck are so small that
even after we've worked hard to collect them, they
are rejected. Buyers say that such small leaves cannot
be used to roll bidis."
Read More...
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Success of microfinance is spawning multiple lending
Subir Roy
Bangalore
WHEN Bangalore based Ujjivan started off
three years ago it was a virtual pioneer in
bringing microfinance to India's urban poor.
Today, one of the key issues it faces is competition.
Microfinance, in India as well as many other poor
countries, has matured and this form of lending is
now considered a successful business model.
Hence global private equity is pouring in on the
trail of high and stable returns. And, as with all successes,
this one has brought problems in its wake
But first, the story of Ujjivan. Set up as a nonbanking financial company (these entities are supervised by the Reserve Bank of India), it produces detailed and highly transparent financial statements which are more common in the corporate world. One reason for this is that it has been founded and is led by Samit Ghosh, who as a banker has worked in India and abroad for names like Citibank, Standard Chartered and HDFC.
Unsurprisingly, it has won a process excellence award recently from the Royal Bank of Scotland for delivering small loans to poor people without any tangible security (only group guarantee from fellow borrowers), in the manner of Grameen Bank, while following efficient modern retail banking practices. It has also just raised a fourth round of private equity funding which has upped its capital over seven times to Rs 108 crore. Among its equity holders are now Unitus (through its Mauritius arm), Bellweather and Sequoia Capital.
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Himanshu Thakkar
IF you are talking about the Himalayas, then Mountains of Concrete is not a very apt title for a report in many ways. The Himalayan mountain chain extending from Pakistan in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east is well known for its fragile, erosion prone nature and young age. So there seems to be a contradiction.
In fact, when a meeting to launch this report in Delhi was announced, some officials of the water resources establishment were angry. They felt this was an insult to the dam building plans of the government. But that is quite another matter.
Still, there is no contradiction here. The report in question is about dam building, or rather building of big hydropower projects in the Himalayan countries of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan and the danger such construction poses to the Himalayas. The threat from the concrete works would include huge walls damming the rivers, underground tunnels that could go scores of kilometers and could completely bypass and dry up rivers for even longer lengths, the massive blasting that would be required for those tunnels, the power houses, the roads, the townships, the mining that would be necessary to procure materials for the projects, the hundreds of kilometer long transmission lines meant for the power promised to be generated. The threats from all this is indeed of Himalayan proportions. And even if dam building cannot dwarf the Himalayas, such activity has the potential to destroy the mountains permanently.
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Dr G G Gangadharan
IN Ayurveda, the biological constitution or the genetic make up of an individual which remains constant throughout one's life is called Prakruthi - personality. The Prakruthi of an individual manifests as the physical attributes and physiological and psychological responses. ‘Pra’ refers to before, beginning, commencement or source of origin, in different contexts. Similarly ‘kruthi’ means creation or to do. Therefore, Prakruthi on the whole means 'the first formed nature' or 'the original form of the being'. Every individual is unique with a constitution of his/her own. This is called Prakruthi.
KNOW YOUR PRAKRUTI
By knowing one’s Prakruti/ constitution one can understand ones health
status and select an appropriate lifestyle to suit his/her nature. It helps
to understand a person's attitudes/ tastes and live appropriately by
adjusting with the environment. It helps you to take control over your
food habits. Selecting food items according to Prakruti will keep a person
healthy. It helps to be aware about the susceptibility to diseases and to
become cautious about food and deeds. It
also helps to prevent diseases.
TYPES OF PRAKRUTI
In nature, individuals with Sama Prakruti
are almost absent. Those with a single predominant
Prakruti are rare. Most individuals
are a combination of two dominant
Prakruti. In those individuals the doshas
exhibit characteristic features of both the
Prakruti in different intensities. Therefore,
Prakruti are – Vata Pitta Prakruti, Vata
Kapha Prakruti and Pitta Kapha Prakruti.
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