It is a bedtime story of economic success, a factory build on a farming land employs more people and generate more income that a poor farmer did. So this story could be labeled Economic Success. But how and who will stand up and call it a rural failure.

“We should be able to meet ends if we had fertile land but people see the factories provide jobs” is what the farmer has to say after is land is taken from him.” All I see is rubbles have replaced our rice fields”

yes “OUR RICE FIELDS” the loss of productive land to roads, cities and golf courses is well known. But the uncontrollable spread of small factories and real estate interventions into rural area, where land is cheap and labor plentiful is a phenomenon has become more common. ‘The Green Revolution’ brought money along with it came the new system, which shattered the way of doing things. Hurting the spiritual side of farming. Rice became a commodity – not a culture. People stop working together. And now in the age of the ‘The Great Concrete Revolution’ the corporate mafias in form of real estate are stealing away the land of the helpless farmer. It is the illusion of modernization that is destroying the bonding between the rich Indian tradition and culture relationship of man in the society with the mother earth - The rites of fertility, the concept of “mother earth” and rebirth in the mother seed, the receptacle of the child like rice soul. The idea of rice souls and ritual ceremonies seems more and more irrational and meaningless. As the soul of the rice is dying over the years so is that of the Indian society with it. It will be not long when the saying of Mahatma Gandhi “The True India lives in the villages” will have to be rephrased as “The True India had become a slave of the corporate human mind”

BHAAT :: A search for a sustainable alternatives to the ‘current frenzy of Development and Industrialization’ in India which can fulfill the most basic needs of common man - food and water..

Saturday, 26 November 2011

Rice :: Oryza sativa


French geographer Pierre Gaourou points out in his book Riz et Civilisation(Rice and Civilization), rice was not a factor in emergence of the civilization(the Indian and Chinese civilization existed long before rice acquired its later dominant position)
It is certainly true rice has influenced, indeed fashioned, the rited and social structure of these civilization by the demand it imposes upon them, including the need for availability of the large labour force and mastery of the growing environment. Rice had a great influence in the live and mind of the people of the region of Asia . The deep rooted notion of the “rice soul”, the Tamil festival of Pongal, the Kalapana system of ancient Thailand and the Azolla cult in Vietnam.
Rice botanically belongs to Oryza sativa L. of Gramineae family. Paddy is a self-pollinated crop. A complete seed of rice is called paddy and contains one rice kernel. Outer layer of rice shell is called husk. The next layer is called rice bran and the innermost part is called rice kernel.

Over time, three sub-species of Oryza sativa developed: Indica, Japónica and Javanica. The designation Indica was used to label the tropical rices and sub-tropical varieties of India and China, while Japónica covered the short- and round- grained varieties of Japan, China and the Korean peninsula. Javanica was used to designate the bulu (awned or bearded) and gundil (awnless or beardless) rices of Indonesia. The summer rices, the aus varieties of eastern India and Bangladesh and the Iong-panicled and bold-grained rices of Indonesia, which showed a high affinity with both the Indica and Japónica rices, were classified as an Intermediate type.

Conventional method of rice cultivation uses 60-70 kilos of seeds per hectare

 A prodigious amount of labor is required to prepare the soil, plant the rice, flood it, weed it, harvest it, thresh it, and polish it for use -- all by hand.
Oryza sativa is the most widely cultivated of the world’s rice species, is generally believed to have instigate , the same expression. “eating rice, to convey the idea of “a meal” or eating in general in many languages use. Cooked Rice in India is commonly known as Bhaat.
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