Food and Nutrition

Amar Singh sits in his huge courtyard at the centre of his home in the village of Atraula in Meerut. Lying in the far west part of Uttar Pradesh, this is a flourishing sugarcane belt. An important agricultural region, its demographic, economic and cultural patterns are similar to that of nearby Haryana and Rajasthan.

There is a huge dearth of cleanliness in India--open defecation is rampant; garbage management in most cities is in shambles; toxic hospital and industrial wastes and sewage are allowed to drain into water sources and food products are laced with chemicals.

In the early hours, the villagers of Khalabari, a tribal-dominated village in the Dumuripadar gram panchayat of Koraput district in Odisha step out of their houses for bringing wood and drinking water. The road to the forest where the water is available is rocky.

The theme for the Conclave this year is “Water Use Efficiency: An Imperative for India” to highlight the imperative of water use efficiency in the industry, agriculture and urban contexts. 

Studies suggest that bees are disappearing at a rapid rate in India. Should we be worried? The disappearance of bees has particularly alarming implications for human existence. Honey bees play a very important role in preserving the biodiversity of nature.

Decades of skating over environmental concerns have clearly cost us dear. The folly of pursuing better crop yields using chemical fertilisers in an indiscriminate manner has been surfacing lately. “Decades of agricultural abuse using fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides have taken its toll on us.

Bhanu is bracing herself for an income loss this year. The wheat she sowed after bajra in winter did not give her the productivity expected. Her soil health is declining, she says. To top it all, she is afraid there will be deficient rainfall this year in her village in Ferozepur Jhirka in Mewat in Haryana.

Signs of mustard aphid, a key pest of the mustard crop appeared predictably in November last year in Dinesh’s farm. Drifting across the open green fields, it landed on the tender leaves of the mustard crop. “It sets in November during the flowering and pod bearing stage of the crop and lasts till January.

Spanning over 1,165 sq km, the Chilika Lake is Asia’s largest saltwater lake. Over 200,000 fishers and 400,000 farmers depend on the lake for their livelihood. But what makes this lake stand out is its biodiversity.Over a million migratory birds winter here, making it a bird watcher’s paradise in India.

Pankaj Sekhsaria’s recent book Islands in flux--The Andaman and Nicobar Story is a collection of around 20 years of his writings on the environmental and conservation concerns faced by the indigenous tribal communities of the region.