Large Cardamom farming on the verge of extinction in the Sikkim Himalaya

SOURCE: THE HIMALAYAN BEACON [BEACON ONLINE]

BY PRIVAT GIRI

The research conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) on the disease problem of large cardamom has indeed not helped the farmers in Sikkim to preserve their native cardamom farm and to overcome their only means of livelihood. The study was carried out with regard to the problem addressed by the Horticulture Department, Sikkim Government to the Dy Director General (Hort.), ICAR, New Delhi. The team of experts in its report advised the farmers to avoid the use of infected planting material and also recommended a pesticide to be used as a preliminary solution. However, even after the use of uninfected planting materials, the farmers are not being able to prevent their farm from this fatal unidentified disease. On the other hand, the use of pesticide has not gained wide acceptance among the farmers who still hold great faith in their traditional techniques of farming. They opine that the pesticide would pollute their water resources and is harmful for their animals who feed from the same land.

Presently, there are approximately sixteen thousand growers of large cardamom in Sikkim among which thirty percent are totally dependent on this crop. It covers around 26 thousand hectares of land under cultivation. As per the official figures, the production and export had surpassed a record of five thousand metric tons. The bulk of the produce is exported to Gulf and Central Asian countries and Pakistan and earns huge foreign exchange for India. Mainly on this ground, Sikkim is fondly known as the ‘land of spices’ in the world arena. But in recent times, the production has been declining drastically though substantive efforts are being undertaken especially by the farmers to overcome the crisis. The Spices Board of India is providing financial assistance for constructing nurseries so that the growers could collect uninfected saplings for replantation. If the similar trend continues for next couple of decades, it will have an enormous impact on the economy of not only Sikkim but also India. Besides the destiny of the thousands of cardamom growers will be at stake.
The farmers in the villages of the Ravangla sub-division say that the diseases namely ‘Chirkey’ and ‘Furkey’ are common and are not so as destructive as this newly arrived viral disease (the villagers call it ‘Paheley’). How assuredly the researchers affirm this as a viral disease is unknown. The condition is so severe that the growers who were contributing approximately three hundred kilograms of fruit in the market before 4-5 years have nothing to sell this year. So as a final solution, the farmers are presently planning to burn the entire farm, keep it barren for some years and do replantation.They have now come across a collective conclusion that the problem lies not with the planting material but the farm itself. And by burning the farm, they hope to wipe out whatever viruses present. The successful cultivation of cardamom by some of the farmers in their normal agricultural farm confirms their assumption.

Therefore, the primary concern is to probe into the variable which can be held accountable for ruining the fate of these cardamom growers. Keeping all those complicated macro scientific discourses (eg: global warming) aside and just evaluating in micro terms, cardamom is best grown under the shade of forest trees. This is the only reason why initially when our ancestors started Cardamom farming in Sikkim, they opted to cultivate it in the jungles. Forest tree covers the plant from frost, hail storms and also direct sunlight which are very injurious to plants during flowering. It is equally pertinent to recognize that Cardamom thrives in moist soil. Therefore, the tree shade helps the farm to retain its moisture and protects it from getting dry. Hence considering all those factors mentioned above which are very vital for the survival of this plant: Is it reasonable to presume that the falling number of trees (rapid deforestation) in the Cardamom farms in Sikkim is liable for this entire crisis? Deforestation minimizes the ability of the farm to retain its moisture which leads to dryness of the land and change in temperature patterns. Change in temperature patterns facilitates change in habitats. Plants, animals, birds and insects previously living there will seek new place suitable for their survival and is replaced by other new species of living beings. Like other species, even the cardamom plant will not be able resist the changing climatic conditions and new varieties of insects with which it is not accustomed to.

Under such circumstances, the fundamental duty of the parties concerned (whether Government or NGOs) is to generate awareness among the farmers about the basic essential requirements for cardamom cultivation rather than confusing them by giving complex scientific term to the disease(viral), which they will never understand. Cutting of trees covering their farm should be discouraged. Comprehensive planning should be formulated for re-positioning the already deteriorating condition of the farm and rehabilitate temporarily those thousands of farmers who are directly dependent on this profession. Else in future, Sikkim not only has to bear the burden all these sixteen thousand farmers engaged in cardamom farming but also has to part way with its brand image… ”The Land of Spices”.

Library of Congress Features Photographs of Sikkim by Alice Kandell

Published on 12 August 2011. Washington, 12 August 2011, Art Media Agency (AMA)

The Library of Congress is hosting a series of photographs of Sikkim by Alice Kandell. Sikkim, situated north of India in the Himalayas, is one of the smallest states in the world. The photographer was immediately fascinated by these beautiful landscapes and decided to capture them on film.

She also photographed Sikkim inhabitants and their daily lives. Photography lovers can visit a website dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre, featuring 15,000 black-and-white photographs.

In 1963, the last Chogyal (former monarchs of the kingdoms of Sikkim and Ladakh), Palden Thondup Namgyal, married Hope Cooke, an American student at Sarah Lawrence College. Cooke then became the Queen of Sikkim and lived with the king and their children during the final years of the kingdom. As a result of this fairytale romance, Sikkim became well known in America through major magazines and newspapers.

Kandell, Cooke’s college friend, embarked on a project to document the Buddhist way of life in Sikkim upon the Chogyal’s request. She started to explore the country and visit mountainous villages. She also photographed official ceremonies and intimate moments of the royal family. All the pictures she took from 1965 to 1971 are exhibited at the Library of Congress.

Prince Palden Namgyal of Sikkim, who lives in New York, said: “Dr. Kandell’s collection of photographs represents a rare and valuable snapshot of an era that many young Sikkimese have very little knowledge of today. The pictures are not only beautiful but represent an important historical record of our family. More importantly, they capture the culture, tradition and daily life of a far simpler and more innocent time. We are very grateful to the Library of Congress for preserving Dr. Kandell’s collection and making it accessible to all.”

About this Collection

This selection of 300 images from the Dr. Alice S. Kandell Collection of Sikkim Photographs portrays the people and landscape of a kingdom high in the Himalaya Mountains. Sikkim, now part of India, borders on Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. Dr. Kandell captured these vivid scenes in order to document a vanishing culture. During visits between 1965 and 1979 (primarily 1965-1971), Dr. Kandell received special permission to photograph Buddhist monks and lamas, ceremonial dances, and monasteries; people working on farms, in canning factories, and at special crafts; and the royal palace and chapel at Gangtok, including the last king, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, his American wife Queen Hope Cooke (Dr. Kandell's college friend), and their family.

Also depicted are the villages and people of Singhik and Lachung, the mountains of Kānchenjunga, the Ralang Hot Springs, and the Gangtok bazaar as well as different ethnic groups including the Kirati (Kiranti), Lepcha, Nepalese, and Bhutia people. Other photographs show the material culture, including religious paintings, ceremonial masks, jewelry and carpets. Special events feature the coronation in 1965 and the wedding of Princess Yanchen Dolma and Simon Abraham in 1979.

Dr. Alice S. Kandell dedicated her rights to the public domain when making this generous gift to the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, in 2010. The entire collection includes approximately 15,000 photographs available for research use at the Library. For more information, see Arrangement and Access.

"A Tour of the Lost Kingdom: Sikkim," a lecture by Hope Cooke and Dr. Kandell is online as a Webcast, http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4912

"As we sow, so shall we reap."

Do well and don’t ever stop doing good, even if it is not appreciated at all or on the contrary are criticised for it. Always performing positive karma is good, but doing selfless karma is even better. The best is doing karma-s without doer-ship notion--not an easy thing. 

Each and every thought that we entertain in our intellect; each and every emotions and feelings that we entertain in our minds; each and every word that we speak and each and every action that we perform; the smallest and the most insignificant, whether good or bad, positive or negative, all return to us  in the same measure, intensity and power by which it was expressed. There is absolutely no escape from it. 

Whatever good we do to others we are actually doing it to ourselves. After all there is only one entity that exists and that is not apart from us. Multiplicity of names, forms and beings are just so many reflections of one entity.

Development of AIIMS Like Institutions

Development of AIIMS Like Institutions

The Government has set a deadline to make the medical colleges at six sites to be made functional from Academic Year 2012-13 and hospitals in the year 2013-14. The Government had approved setting up of six AIIMS-like institutions in the States of Bihar (Patna), Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal), Orissa (Bhubaneswar), Rajasthan (Jodhpur) and Uttarakhand (Rishikesh) under the first phase of Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).

Construction of Medical Colleges and Hospital Complexes at all the six AIIMS-like institutions in first phase has started and is in full swing. Residential complex at Jodhpur and Raipur has been completed and the work is in progress at remaining sites. An amount of Rs. 847 Crore has been released so far.

The sites for setting up AIIMS-like institutions have been identified on the basis of various socio-economic indicators like human development index, literacy rate, population living below poverty line, and per capita income, and health indicators like population to bed ratio, prevalence rate of serious communicable diseases, infant mortality rate etc.

This information was laid in Rajya Sabha today by the Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad.

SBS/ls
(Release ID :74189)

Enterprise- Cold Chain

Cold Chain Infrastructure for Processing of Fruits & Vegetables

In order to minimize wastage of fruit and vegetables, Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MFPI) is encouraging setting up of cold chain facilities. The Ministry has a Plan Scheme for Cold Chain, Value Addition and Preservation Infrastructure during the 11th Plan to provide financial assistance to project proposals received from public / private organizations for cold chain infrastructure development. The scheme envisages financial assistance in the form of grant-in-aid @ 50% of the total cost of plant and machinery and technical civil works in general areas and 75% for North Eastern Region and difficult areas subject to a maximum of Rs.10.00 crore.

The Vision 2015 Document has been finalized by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MFPI), which envisages tripling the size of the processed food sector by increasing the level of processing of perishables from 6% to 20%, value addition from 20% 35% and share in global food trade from 1.5% to 3% by 2015.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, Dr. Charan Das Mahant in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

MP:SB:CP: processing fruits (9.8.2011)
(Release ID :74205)

Profiting From The Great Panic

Profiting From The Great Panic

Aug 5, 2011

Many times in the past years, publications from Value Research have published articles in response to investors’ need to response to a particular market situation. In every one of these articles, regardless of whether the markets have looked good, bad or ugly, we’ve given exactly the same advice. Not only that, the whole point of our advice is that it has always been the same.


The Value Research Way
Now is possibly the most stressful situation that Indian equity investors have ever faced. Let’s take a look at what we’ve said in the past, and how the Great Panic of 2008 reinforces the principles behind our advice. Here’s a summary of those unchanging principles.

Any investor who has followed this advice is sitting pretty today, largely unaffected by the Great Panic. The market value of your investments may be down today, but since you don’t need any of it for many years to come, that doesn’t matter. Long before you’ll need the money, it would have had a chance to start growing again.

Today, the natural response of many investors to what we’re saying is that right now, they’ve lost money. They say, “The returns may come back in the future, but what about the losses that I’ve made today". Those who say this are right in their arithmetic, but completely wrong in their assumptions. The only way to avoid the occasional crash is to be able to see the future, and if you could see into the future then you wouldn’t be reading this any way. The whole point of investment approach that we are advocating is that it eliminates the need to see into the future.

The Past Proves the Point
The actual track record of the past decade shows that this approach works quite well. If you had started investing Rs 20,000 a month in a Sensex-based index fund in early 1997 and had continued to do so without regard to the ups and downs of the market, then today your rate of return would have stood at 14 per cent per annum. In all, you would have gradually put in Rs 28.6 lakh and these investments would have stood at Rs 66 lakh today, after the crash.
During this period, many mutual funds have comfortably beaten the Sensex so the Rs 66 lakh is a rather conservative figure. In a median fund, the 10 years would have seen your nest egg reach about Rs 1.04 crore. And this, during a decade which has witnessed two huge market crashes!
That’s after absorbing the hit of the worst panic that anyone has ever seen, when the market is at a long-term low point. Once any kind of recovery commences, the value is very likely to shoot up. If this isn’t a perfect demonstration for the value of our slow-and-steady way, then nothing can be.
Over such a long period, the so-called ‘safe’ fixed-income avenues do so much worse than supposedly ‘unsafe’ equity, that the there’s no contest at all. Over this same period, you could have earned an average of no more than around 8 per cent per annum in fixed income investments. The same inputs would leave you with just about Rs 44 lakh, which doesn’t cover even the inflation rate adequately.
The moral of the story: Despite the crashes, equity is the far safer option over the long run. The real danger to your financial well-being is not market crashes, but from the insidious affect of inflation.

Crashes are Your Friends
In the equity markets, you make more money not despite the crashes, but because of the crashes. Let’s modify the above story with the assumption that the post-tech crash of 2000-2001 never happened. The way that crash actually happened, the Sensex reached a peak of about 5,900 in February 2000. It then crashed and went as low as about 2,600 in September 2001. It then started rising and reached the previous peak of ~6,190 again only in January 2004.

Let’s assume that the crash never happened. The Sensex reached 5,600 in March 2000 and then stayed at that level till October 2004. If that had happened, then your Rs 20,000 a month would be worth Rs 55 lakh instead of Rs 66 lakh! That’s right. For the long term investor, the crash of 2000 was worth a lot of money.

How did you make more money because the crash? The answer is obvious to anyone who understands the basic arithmetic of what’s happening here. The crash enabled you to buy cheap and thus eventually raised your total returns. If you are investing steadily for the long-term, then intermittent crashes help you make more money, not less.

And that is how you will eventually profit from the big crashes. Stocks are now cheap, and are probably going to get cheaper. The longer and deeper this crash, the more money you will eventually make. If you know what’s good for you, you should be praying that the Sensex falls to maybe 6000 or 7000 and then stays there for a few months or years before coming to life again.

And that’s the secret of equity investing, the real moral of the story: For the long-term investor, equity is not good despite the occasional crash. It’s good precisely because it crashes. Volatility is your friend. Volatility is what will make you rich.

source:Valueresearch

source:livemint