Food Security

People talk about eating right food, eye on calorie intake, food at right time, paleo diet,etc. But why to talk about these when there is no food security? Food Security here, I mean is not the about the access to sufficient, balanced and nutritious diet, but about the safe diet.

The artificial egg, rice, meat, vegetables, etc are getting circulated in the Indian market, noiselessly.What could be the promise on food safety in the next ten years? Our children are going to eat a food that is not safe! Adulteration at its pinnacle - Plastics in food! You would have watched the videos of making these artificial food - rice, cabbage, egg, meat.... brilliant to watch! But what if we are asked to eat those?

By 2050 we'll need to feed two billion more people. Are we finding these "brilliant" artificial ways to meet the demands? Advancement in Technology, Education, rise in buying power, GDP... nothing is gonna feed us, until we start to realize the threat imposed on us.

Let us be solution finders rather than being criticizers. So what could be the solution. Meeting our own demands ourselves. Self-sustained way of life. Yep, I mean lets go back to our olden days. Our ancestors tamed their own pets and cattle, cultivated and all their needs were met. And now in this growing population and out-bursting demand we might get into a situation to meet our needs. 

So let us not wait for the bad days to come. "Be the change you want to see". To start with we can grow vegetables for our daily use in our balcony. And people who are "rich enough" to own a shed can bring-up cage free chickens for eggs and cattle for dairy needs! Sounds weird?!! Who knows this might be the future of our nation. As years pass by we get saturated with Educational needs and money, but the plight of farming and farmers, the environment and the need for water, remain deprived.

Let's take the current water crisis, drought condition and hyping food adulteration as a wake-up call and act cleverly to save our future generation. Always believe in "Many a drop make an Ocean". And don't forget to plant a tree where ever u can:)

Save Water.... Save Tamilnadu....

First step would be 'realization'. We remain eye folded to many inconsiderate actions by the government (both state and central). Truly speaking we can't rise flag against them. It's senseless too. Instead let us start to act, show our protest via actions. The TamilNadu Karnataka issue would be a never ending crisis. So the constructive approach from our side would be to store, preserve and use effectively each and every drop of water we have. Anytime we are not prepared to meet the flood or the drought conditions. The recent (2015) Chennai flood was one such type. Some how people recuperated from the disaster, with no doubt that the disaster is man-made. For most of us the flood or drought at any part of our state would be just a news. But now its high time to act and spread awareness. The social medias are already doing a fair part in creating awareness. To act is our duty or I would say, to act and to see the change would be the real asset we could leave behind for our children. 

I believe in "Many a drop make an ocean". Let's start to act with what we are capable of and lets not worry about the final result. To stress the seriousness of the problem let us look closer what is actually happening around us. Hold your breath the following list goes endless.

Methane extraction
India was an agricultural country once and the backbone was said to be the agriculture-long back. But now every aspect in our nation is against agriculture. Starting from drought, demonetization issue till government's silence on the plight of farmers, every facet of agriculture and farmers remains in a predicament. The biggest agitation among farmers started when the government went keen on methane project ignoring all the existing problems of farmers. How much water would be sucked for the execution of this project is out of our imagination.

High way extension
The law says that any agency that cuts down tress as part of developmental works must plant thrice its number to compensate the loss. But not even a sing tree has been planted in all these years after "mindless" cutting of tress by NHAI for various road widening projects. Thousands of trees has been cut down but there is no space for new one.

Chennai Flood

As we all know Chennai experienced its worst storm during 2015. The government or the people weren't prepared to face the unexpected heavy flow of rain. Indiscriminate development and shoddy urban planning contributed to the worst floods in the fourth most populous city in the country. If proper urban planning would have been done think how much water we could have saved and also saved the people from the worst hit. The Government should consider this as a wake-up call and act to avoid any disaster in future.

CoCo-Cola, Pepsi drawing water from Thamirabarani river
The recent verdict from high court during March 2017 had lifted the ban on supplying water from Thamirabarani river to the bottling plants of Pepsi and Coco-cola which is located at Tirunelveli district. What an irony, farmers die because of drought but the foreign companies are getting tonnes of water for cheap rate.

Sand Mining
Sand Mining is a big industry. Regulating it and finding trade-off between the industrial growth and environment is the need of the hour.

Water Resources
Illegal construction on lakes and ponds, undredged lakes and ponds, effluents from dyeing units, plastic wastes, sand mining and so forth will shatter our water resources completely one day.

And the list goes....
Lets not wait for the Government to take any action. It will end up in bizarre ways like floating thermocol sheets over water. In future blogs lets discuss what as an individual we can do to preserve "the Elixir of life - Water" for our children.