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Dear Frances Moore Lapp=C3=A9 and GTI colleagues,

To begin with, congratulations on producing such a clear and erudite
addition to the repertoire of global transition to sustainability. I have
been an ardent follower of GTI and am always enthusiastic to know what
happens next: how we through small baby steps create and contribute to this
rather exciting evolution of human civilization.

I would like to share a few anecdotes from the Far Eastern world where
indigenous communities managed to preserve some of the unique traditions of
sustainable agriculture. This may, however, be short-lived, as they
struggle to grapple with the onslaught of conventional agriculture. In
Assam, we need to note that conventional industrial agriculture only
penetrated through the colonial capitalism of the tea industry. Food crops
were fortunately not tampered with, and communities were allowed to carry
on with their traditional practices. However, it is not to say that the
scourges of industrial agriculture and production of tea did not impact the
local ecosystem, biodiversity, and livelihood patterns due to the
indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers for mass production. Thus, in
spite of large-scale degradation of soil quality, water, and human health,
what can be still salvaged is probably the invaluable indigenous knowledge
of sustainable agricultural practices among the
indigenous communities in areas of flood control and management, bio
fertilizers, pest control, multi-cropping, seed preservation, food storage,
livelihood support, and local food security. It is remarkable that most of
the tribal communities inhabiting this region have been self-sustaining in
terms of their social structure and economy. Starvation deaths are unheard
of, and common property resources are regulated through customary laws that
ensure equity, inter-generational stability, and to some extent gender
equality.

Popular in India, the traditional paradigm of sustainable agriculture is
the organic agricultural practices underlined in the greater traditions of
Hinduism and its grand narrative in texts such as Vrikshayurveda and in
practices of agnihotra yajna, etc. The little traditions of the tribal folk
cultures, such as those inhabiting the peripheries of Northeast India, many
a times go unnoticed due to the lack of proper documentation and research
in these areas. There is a great impetus in this region to go organic,
given the potentials for organic farming and a growing market of citizens
seeking =E2=80=98clean and pure food=E2=80=99 production. Undoubtedly, ther=
e is enormous
potential for this region, given that it is not even halfway as polluted as
the other parts of India that went for intensive agriculture during the
Green Revolution, such as Punjab and Bengal. Learning from the price that
was paid by the Green Revolution in terms of adverse health impacts and
natural resource pollution, the
current agenda is to go towards an evergreen revolution with full support
of the government. Regions like Northeast India, being the last frontier to
the Indian post-development planning, await this attention eagerly. But,
are they ready for this? A government commissioned study as was reiterated
by Guy Dauncey in Canada should be the first step. A haphazard adoption of
organic farming will not only jeopardize the ethical component of going
organic, but will also uproot and destabilize prospects of agroecology in
one of the most deserving regions of the world. Right now, there are a
number of unorganized endeavours towards organic farming by private
entrepreneurs and local farmers. However, in the absence of awareness and
commitment to organic food; coordination and networking between farmers and
consumers; and community and institutional support for farms to be
self-sustaining in terms of seeds, storage, marketing and brand building,
organic farming in Assam and North East India as
a whole may never see the dawn of success.

In fact, even when industrial manufacturing backed by large corporations
has tried to transition to sustainable practices, it has found itself
bitterly overthrown. For example, in Assam in the year 2006-07, in an
experiment undertaken by Dhekiajuli Tea Estate owned by Parry Agro
Industries Ltd, a corporate conglomerate tried to implement sustainable
agricultural practices pertaining to production techniques in tea
cultivation. The initiative was taken by the local management primarily to
address the hazardous impact of toxicity in the local environment,
particularly soil and water quality. The impact on the health of the
resident labour population made the management sit up when they found a
significant rise in the number of lung diseases, skin infection, and birth
deformity among workers. I first visited the tea garden in 2007 to conduct
fieldwork with my students from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Guwahati, who had registered for my course =E2=80=9CConcepts and Ideologies=
 in
Social Life,=E2=80=9D where sustainability and sustainable development as a
conceptual paradigm from sociological perspective was explored. The
experience for us was positive, and the optimism of the management and
workers was contagious and motivating for the young technocrats of future
India. The management was committed to a market-driven, competitive
industrial manufacturing process but steered their motivation with a
parallel experiment of vermicompost, agnihotri yajna, Panchgavya or
cowpathy, Amrit pani or fermented cowdung which generates about 250 kinds
of beneficial bacteria and other localized and organic pest control and
fertiliser techniques to promote sustainable industrial growth with low
chemical impact. Sources of Indigenous knowledge such as Vrikshayurveda
were systematically explored to unearth traditional organic practices in
farming and agriculture. The cultural worldview of environmental
sustainability embedded in our traditional knowledge about agricultural
practices
and farming is elabourate in its glorification of trees and tree planting.
Every topic connected with the science of plant life such as procuring,
preserving, and treating of seeds before planting; preparing pits for
planting saplings; selection of soil; method of watering; nourishments and
fertilizers; plant diseases and plant protection from internal and external
diseases; layout of a garden; agricultural and horticultural wonders;
groundwater resources; etc.; finds a place in these texts.

The management was forced to abandon the grand project as an unfulfilled
legacy, succumbing to the formidable forces driving our unsustainable
existence. In spite of significant progress made towards environmental and
labour health and the quality of natural capital like land, water, and soil
(which started reflecting low toxin and chemical content that is disastrous
and highly polluted), the Dhekiajuli Tea Estate abandoned this experiment
in 2014. Apparently, the embedded externalized costs of poor health,
environmental degradation, and toxic waste generation are seldom reflected
into the company balance sheet. As a result, the transition towards the new
paradigm of sustainable industrialization of tea manufacture was seen as a
failure in terms of production cost and output. The situation will be worse
in case of unorganized farmers who live in rural areas and for whom in the
first place itself agriculture is economically non-viable due to small
landholdings and lack of
infrastructural support. Moreover, the rather inferior value attached to
manual labour makes farming a very low-prestige profession which the
emerging educated middle classes loathe to associate themselves with. The
push factors of emerging urbanization have made rural India and all its
associated riders of village life and farming as a livelihood option
unattractive to the youth. This is a dangerous trend for emerging
economies: the centrifugal forces of urbanization are creating havoc with
the balancing of local development of rural India and preservation of its
'little and folk traditions.' In fact, what is happening is even dangerous:
a booming ICT, satellite TV, mobile, and internet facility is bringing the
global society into the threshold of village society, but at the cost of a
great loss to the self-esteem of rural India as it finds itself
dispossessed of its sustainable heritage, which includes organic farming
and sustainable food cultivation.

Dr Sujata Dutta Hazarika
Co-founder GISDP
www.gisdp.orgsujata at ignou.ac.in

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On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 4:00 AM, Great Transition Network wrote: