The historical record shows that without any chemical
inputs, those who peopled this land lived healthy lives. They built sophisticated irrigation
systems. Their architecture and
engineering feats astound engineers and architects of the modern era. Perhaps five hundred years of colonial
subjugation crafted into the national DNA servility of the kind that takes
anything coming from the West as ‘good’ and not requiring of query. Perhaps it taught us to spit on our ancestors
and blindly expose our children to poisons neatly packaged and exquisitely
advertised.
Experts, so-called, fed us huge doses of policy. We got the
‘Green Revolution’. We were told to
think ‘agribusiness’, high yielding varieties, high value crops and so on. We were advised to decentralize agricultural
research and our policy makers were nudged (through ‘incentives’) or
arm-twisted with aid (‘we give, but you implement OUR policy’) to replace
agriculture extension personnel with peddlers of poison.
And yet, it must be mentioned, not everyone purchased the
rubbish. There were and are scientists
who are not swayed by incentive nor lacking in compulsion to use critical
faculties. There were and are on-the-ground
practitioners who had the wisdom to understand the superior worth of
traditional practices. And so, all is
not lost. Against heavy odds which
include even legislation that rebels against traditional agriculture and
massive investment to persuade policy-makers, academics, farmers and consumers
to embrace poisons and draw them away from more wholesome practices, there are
people who keep their feet firmly planted in the soil of wisdom and science,
who love the earth they stand on and draw from the best that culture and
heritage can offer.
Last week, I received two books. The first is by Mathugama Seneviruwan,
indefatigable environmentalist, champion and grower of traditional seeds
(especially rice) and traditional practices, tireless campaigner against
short-sighted intrusions on all economic spheres that have long-term ill
effects on the people. ‘Thel pora osse mihi mavata vasa’
(Poisoning Mother Earth through fertilizer and other chemical inputs), comes
not just with criticism but answers too.
Seneviruwan offers a reading of the ‘development’ that was
taken as ‘good’ without any investigation of claims and with hardly any
appraisal during implementation. He
unpacks all the myths of chemical inputs.
He makes an excellent case for a return to the drawing board and indeed
draws up a blueprint for recovery.
May he be read and read widely. May his words take wing and sing in the
hearts of the generation who will have to work out the poisons that have been
implanted in mind and injected into body so that they will return to the earth
and tread gently thereafter.
The second is a re-print of Wasanthaya Nihandaya by Chandi Rajapakse. The first print of her translation of Rachel
Carson’s classic, ‘Silent Spring’ came out in 2002. I remember Chandi, who is professor in the
Agriculture Faculty, University of Peradeniya, a soil scientist in fact,
lamenting around the time the translation came out that people were reading her
book all wrong. Perhaps that is inevitable. On the other hand, there will be those who
get her message right too. Seneviruwan,
for example, is inspired by many sources and one of them is ‘Silent
Spring’.
Chandi, in a lengthy ‘translator’s note’ encapsulates the
distance we have come (or rather, gone back), and describes where exactly we
are now, ‘thanks’ to chemical fertilizers.
A single book (or even two) will not change things or cause an overnight
abandonment of policies and practices that have made some people, powerful
people to be precise, very rich. On the
other hand, we are quickly reaching a junction called ‘No Other Choice’. That’s sad, but then again, in a world where
there are no magnificent victories or tragic defeats (all things considered),
there is certainly reason to hope.
There are people who live their lives as though they are
lamps. Matugama Seneviruwan is one.
Prof. Chandi Rajapakse is another. They
make us rich by pointing out our poverties and by throwing light on the
pathways that lead out of poverty.
We have to roll back the years. Roll back policy that poisoned the good earth
in ways that the poison percolated into our bodies and our minds. Significant sections of our population are
dying of Chronic Kidney Disease. Half the
population is plagued by Diabetes. Our children need not be.
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