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Thursday, May 30, 2019
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Eight-month-old infant’s body found dumped on banks of Mangaluru river
Strangulation is the suspected cause of death for the baby girl, who was the daughter of construction labourers.
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In a shocking incident, an eight-month-old baby girl's body was found on the banks of river Netravathi in Bolar of Mangaluru city on Monday. The suspected cause of death is strangulation. The city police have identified the infant, Mounashree, as the daughter of Laxman Temminal and Roopa, who are construction workers in the city. According to authorities, the infant’s parents hail from Koppal district and moved to the city about two weeks ago. They were staying at a camp shed of a private construction company in Bolar along with relatives and were employed as construction labourers. According to a complaint filed by the infant’s mother Roopa Temminal, on May 27 she left to work around 8 am in the morning, leaving her infant with her husband Laxman who said that he not keeping well and would not attend work. At 1 pm the same day, she was informed by her relative, Ambraish, that her baby was missing from home. Accompanied by her relatives, Roopa rushed home and spoke to her husband, who told her that he put the baby to sleep in a cradle around 11.45 am, but upon his return, he found that the child was missing. The couple, along with their relatives, searched for the baby till 5 pm. At that point, a relative informed them that the body of a baby had been found near Bolar ferry park on the banks of river Netravathi. When Roopa rushed to the spot, she found the dead body of Mounashree and immediately took the infant to the Wenlock Hospital. The doctors informed her that the baby was dead on arrival and they suspected that she had been strangled. It was also stated in medical reports that scratch marks were found on the baby’s face as well. Based on the mothers complaint, Mangalore South Police Station is probing the case. No arrests have not been made as yet.
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For Rs 38,000, a central govt school in Bengaluru jeopardising tribal student's future?
The 15-year-old from Andhra who has completed Class 10 from the same school is being denied the application form for Class 11.
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Fifteen-year-old Yerikala Supriya from Gooty town in Anantapur district would like to go to college to study Political Science. But she is allegedly being denied the application form for seeking admission to Class 11 in Kendriya Vidyalaya, ASC Centre in Bengaluru, where she recently completed Class 10. Supriya, who belongs to the Yerukula community, a Scheduled Tribe, had studied from Class 1 to 9 in Kendriya Vidyalaya Gooty. Her father Sudhakar felt that since Supriya is a sharp and articulate child, she must be able to access better educational opportunities and exposure than those available in her hometown. “She can speak English and Hindi quite well. She is a very bright child. She is good at sports too. In Class 7, she was in a team that came third in the KV Regional Sports Meet. I thought she could have a great future if she could go to a school in a city. Bengaluru was close by, so I came multiple times and tried for admission into KV ASC Centre since they have hostel facility. I tried from the time she was in Class 8. Finally, she was given admission in Class 10,” Sudhakar said. Sudhakar, who rears cattle for a living, occasionally also does painting jobs for additional income. On average, he earns Rs 300 a day. “I have a BPL (Below Poverty Line) card. Based on that, the school said that we would not have to pay tuition fees, but a hostel fee of around Rs 6,000 per month would be charged,” said Sudhakar. Supriya joined the school on June 23 last year. Her father paid the monthly hostel fees for the first few months, but since September 2018, he was unable to bear the expense any longer. Since then, Supriya and her father have been issued notices from the school management to pay the fees, but Sudhakar was unable to raise the required amount. The hostel eventually became an unpleasant and hostile environment for the young girl. Although Supriya was allowed to stay in the hostel and complete her academic year, when her father went to take her home after her Class 10 board exams ended, the hostel authorities were allegedly hostile to them, asking them to vacate the hostel completely, saying that’s the norm for Class 10 students, who will have to seek admission again for Class 11. When asked why only Supriya was being told to do so, while the other students of her class were allowed to leave some of their belongings in the hostel, the hostel authorities allegedly made harsh comments, saying it was doubtful that Supriya would pass Class 10, so they should leave without leaving a single object behind. With the school announcing that Class 11 admission forms would be available for KV students from May 15 to May 30, Supriya and her father arrived at the school. Although Supriya had passed Class 10 with 60.6%, the school authorities allegedly told her and her father that they had been instructed by the school principal to not issue the admission form for Supriya. On questioning further, they were told to talk to the principal directly, who is currently on leave and will return to work only after June 6. With the school’s notice saying that May 30 would be the last date for issuing admission forms for KV students, Supriya and her father are anxious about her future. Her father says that he cannot afford the fees for a private college, and KV Gooty does not offer the humanities stream for Class 11. Authorities from the KV Regional Office in Bengaluru, as well as KV ASC Centre, have claimed that the school principal is the final authority to be contacted over the issue. The principal, who is on leave, has not responded to calls and messages. Although Kendriya Vidyalaya schools primarily cater to “educational needs of children of transferable Central Government employees … by providing a common programme of education”, their objectives also include providing education for “floating populations and others including those living in remote and undeveloped locations of the country.” The schools provide tuition fee exemption for SC/ST students, and also have 15% seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and 7.5% reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Because of a failure to pay an outstanding hostel fee amount of Rs 38,000, Supriya is in danger of losing out on an aspirational opportunity and her family’s hopes of social and economic mobility for their child.
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K’taka CM HD Kumaraswamy to attend Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremon
He will also meet Rahul Gandhi during his Delhi visit and ask him to continue as the president of the AICC.
Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister elect Narendra Modi in Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday. The Chief Minister said that he will also meet Rahul Gandhi during his Delhi visit and ask him to continue as the president of the AICC. The announcement of his visit was made amidst hectic developments at the Kumara Krupa Government Guest House in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The CM met with the top brass of the state Congress including former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and AICC Karnataka-in-charge KC Venugopal. Others present in the meeting were Deputy CM G Parameshwara, Water Resources Minister and Congress’ troubleshooter in chief DK Shivakumar, Home Minister MB Patil and KPCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao. The was the first formal meeting between the top leaders of the ruling coalition after they suffered a drubbing in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls. However, all the leaders assured that there was no threat to the state government. This amidst the speculation that a re-energized BJP might succeed in making the dissident Congress MLAs, especially led by Ramesh Jarkiholi resign. Following the meeting, former CM Siddaramaiah reiterated that there won’t be a rejig in the state cabinet to accommodate dissenting Congress MLAs. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, the Congress MLAs are set to meet to chalk out the future course of action. Speaking on this, KPCC president Gundu Rao said, “We have a road map for the future. We will discuss how government programs can help the people of the state. MLAs getting ministerial positions is not important.” Meanwhile, BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa has claimed that his party would not make any efforts to destabilise the government. Instead, he said, the government will itself dissolve due to infighting among the Congress and JD(S). Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, Yeddyurappa said, “We don't have any feeling that we have to go for elections. It is certain that they (Congress and JDS) will go home fighting each other. We will wait. We are 105 (MLAs), we are ready to wait." "Our legislators also feel that the government will fall because of their infighting and let's wait. There is no need to talk about dissolving the assembly or anything else. Let them (Congress-JDS) work efficiently or resign and go home. Instead of that by creating an atmosphere of confusion and loot they are indulging in, they cannot be forgiven," he added.
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‘FIR on Vishwavani editor amounts to abuse of power, should be withdrawn’: SM Krishna
SM Krishna said the "undemocratic and dictatorial attitude" was dangerous to the independent functioning of the media.
Condemning the intolerance of the Karnataka government towards the media, BJP leader S.M. Krishna on Wednesday urged Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy to withdraw the FIR filed against a Kannada editor over an article criticizing the Chief Minister's son Nikhil. "The FIR against 'Vishwavani' editor Vishweshwar Bhat should be withdrawn as it amounts to abuse of power and interference in the freedom of press," Krishna said in a statement in Bengaluru. The FIR was booked on Monday after Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) General Secretary Pradeep Kumar filed a complaint at a police station against Bhat for reporting on May 25 that Nikhil blamed former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda for his defeat in the Lok Sabha election. "I don't understand the need for a Chief Minister to make his crony file a complaint and order the police to book a case against the editor of a leading Kannada daily instead of refuting the news story and clarifying what actually transpired between his son (Nikhil) and his father (Gowda) on the phone," said Krishna in the statement. According to the article, which Bhat claimed was based on reliable sources, an inebriated Nikhil had shouted at Gowda senior at the latter's residence for not ensuring his victory from Mandya and failing to prevent Congress leaders from campaigning for the Independent (Sumalatha Ambareesh) and voting in favour of her. Multilingual South Indian actress Sumalatha won the high-profile Mandya seat by a margin of 1,25,876 votes in the otherwise JD-S bastion, about 100 km southwest of Bengaluru in the old Mysuru region. Noting that the authoritarian act of the police at the behest of the Chief Minster was a sign of frustration over the ignominious defeat, Krishna said the "undemocratic and dictatorial attitude" was dangerous to the independent functioning of the media. Krishna, 87, who hails from Maddur in Mandya district, joined the BJP in March 2018 after quitting the Congress in January 2018. He campaigned for Sumalatha. Nikhil was a joint candidate in Mandya where the politically powerful Vokkaliga community to which the Gowda clan belongs is a dominant force. Of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka, a resurgent BJP won 25 while the JD-S and Congress won only one each to retain Bangalore Rural and Hassan, where Nikhil's cousin brother Prajwal Revanna defeated BJP's A Manju.
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How urban organic farming in India may be working against traditional farmers
The me-focussed concerns of urban rooftop farmers and consumers for organic produce is hurting rather than helping the agrarian industry, some experts say.
Image courtesy of The Timbaktu Collective
Lately, hashtags like #ootafromyourthota and #organicterracegarden are trending on Instagram indicating a growing demographic of urban Indians rolling up their sleeves and joining an internationally burgeoning #growyourownfood movement. Grocery stores stocked with ‘organic’ brands are popping up in every hip urban neighbourhood in the nation, which makes it seem like everyone has received the memo on ‘clean living.’ This is largely reflective of one kind of urban farming, where individuals and startups are capitalising and catering to the urbanites’ desire for a more eco-conscious lifestyle through holdings and rooftop gardens. The former, small-holdings farmers, refers to those who practice subsistence farming on agricultural zones within growing urban limits. But this form of farming has greatly reduced in the last two decades. According to the Karnataka government’s Department of Agriculture, during Bengaluru’s IT boom, the city went from 0.1 million hectares in 2000 to 0.04 million hectares in 2015. Rooftop gardens, in the meantime, have boomed. They have been gaining ground through start-ups and resident associations in a bid to leave a smaller impression on the planet. However, stakeholders in the domain of agriculture and production don’t quite agree with this growing trend in urban centres. They’d rather see shifts towards supporting already existing and entrenched networks of farmers and producers. ‘Me focussed’ or green focussed? Arshiya Bose, the founder of Black Baza Coffee, a Bengaluru-based organisation committed to ‘the idea of creating a local, participatory and meaningful movement for coffee,’ says, “Most things certified as organic don’t actively recharge the local ecosystem and biodiversity, and if they do, it is only incidental. As urban consumers, we should be asking the more important question: What is the consumer to producer to earth relationship?” Arshiya points to the fact that this choice for most urban Indians isn’t motivated by environmental concerns at all. “We’re making this choice from a personal health angle,” she says. She draws a parallel with the boom in the chemical-free or natural cosmetics markets with brands like Hollywood star Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company. “The motivation comes from being ‘me focussed.’ It comes from ‘I don’t want to put chemicals on my skin’ which leads to ‘I don’t want to consume anything with chemicals.’ These are certainly valid, important concerns. But that’s a separate goal,” she explains. “This urban interest in ‘organic’ isn’t about farming or the planet at all,” she adds. She instead insists on reminding us that, “organic isn’t a fad but rather still a livelihood option for most producers in India.” In fact, according to the World of Organic Agriculture Report 2018, India has more than thirty percent of the world’s 2.7 million organic producers. “The urban organic rooftop gardener might have good intentions, and granted it is a good move, but it doesn’t begin to address the agrarian crisis in our country,” she warns. Siddharth Rao, a conservation biologist with Adavi Trust and director of ecology at the Anantapur-based The Timbaktu Collective echoes this idea of the new-age urban farmer but adds, “There isn’t enough data on their real impact on the situation but it is definitely a growing trend.” Though, it seems more likely the potential for the urban centres to determine market trends that’s actually hampering real benefits. “While the conversation around organic agriculture has been taken over with the different requirements needed for different kinds of certification, the simplest way to think about this mode of farming would be to see if it supports and sustains life,” he says. Holding ‘organic’ to this simple standard is a much more beneficial approach to conservation, Siddharth believes. “All modern farming techniques are protocols and methods appropriated from traditional farmer knowledge systems, which are eventually about finding firm footing in the ecosystem of the local land. For example, it is knowing that one has to have butterfly-attracting plants, or other ones that repel insects, or that having trees helps recharge groundwater and suppress carbon,” he explains. “Though, modern farming techniques have made this learned knowledge more accessible…the objectives shouldn’t be to showcase one modern [farming] method as better than the other or just to grow clean food. It definitely needs to account for several other factors before being considered as ‘beneficial’ to the planet,” he cautions. Modern versus traditional, and the economics of both The growing need for ‘organic’ has caused large companies to contract marginal farmers into ‘organic farming’ and herein lies the major problem, according to these stakeholders. “It’s slightly better in India than globally but here too, commercial organic farming simply means not putting chemical inputs into the earth and monoculture [the cultivation of a single crop],” Siddharth says. “If you take traditional farming, in a fertile place like Kerala, you’d notice that there’s inherent biodiversity. There will be trees, a healthy diversity of wild and domestic animals, bees and earthworms, and so on. There will be intercropping and multi-cropping over the year, some of the crops will be grown for the family’s consumption alone,” explains Siddharth. “And these are the basic tenets of most modern farming schools like permaculture and such,” he adds. It would seem that knowledge isn’t the problem at all, it’s that it isn’t incentivised fairly, or made viable for the producer to pursue. “Organic farming incentivisation becomes easier if there are better rates for the producer. We’ve found at Timbaktu Organics, pre-determining a price for the produce even before the farmer sows and ensuring that it is fair, not cheating them on weights and measures, and making sure that the producer actually receives the amount that was assured to them. If they see economic benefits through bonuses and share in profits, then one doesn’t need to convince them about returning to their traditional methods,” explains Siddharth. Farmer field school by Timbaktu Collective. of Black Baza Coffee underscores this point that economic gains to the producer should be taken into account while having this conversation around conservation. “We need to support the existing networks of organic farmers in this country, build up their capacity to regenerate and reach the right markets, so that they continue to do organic farming.” Problems at policy-level “The urban turn towards organic might be harmless at best but isn’t helpful,” said Arshiya, noting that we need to see changes at the level of policy from the government to address these issues. While they’ve certainly made it easier and even free to get organic certification through the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) there are still issues. There’s a lack of organic manure as replacement for chemical fertilisers, strangled access to markets and no financial support in the transition to organic farming happens, which hasn’t encouraged the boom that was intended. Sundeep Kamath of the Biodynamic Association stresses that our conventional understanding of organic farming is still the problem with policy-making. “We’re focussed only on the surface, we’re convinced that eliminating chemical inputs is the ultimate good thing to do,” he says. “We need to look beyond, we need to look at everything from the bacteria to the bees, from trees to tiny worms, because all of these things together result in better soil fertility and eventually enhances the quality and quantity of the produce. At PDS Organic Spices, one of the organisations we work with, we have found doing organic farming that foregrounds biodiversity has resulted in 14 different kinds of pepper, each with a unique taste, which has increased their financial value benefitting the producer in the end. We see that nature has its own good guys who take care of the bad guys. Studies have found that mimicking the local environment is most beneficial and best for farming,” Sundeep explains. “But, in the end, it must make monetary sense to the producer for this mode to be adopted,” he adds, quickly. Hand processing of millets. Sundeep attests that the government has taken big policy steps towards addressing the farmer crisis but they aren’t enough. “Awareness of government subsidies, loans and promotions means that most farmers cannot access them at all. These policies need to made more realistic and practical, they need to address the needs of the landless, tenant and smallholdings’ farmers who make up most of the country’s farmer class and not just the land owners,” he points out. Ensuring economic benefits to producers also matters because of its direct correlation to respectability and viability. “The odds are stacked against the farmer. So, there’s large migration to the cities, farmers rather work as construction workers, lift operators and security guards because it at least guarantees them a steady income,” he says. Siddharth of Adavi Trust and The Timbaktu Collective concurs with this trend of dwindling farmers. “Most importantly, we need for the consumer to understand that they are paying the right price, the fair price to the producer. And creating particular awareness like this is a complex undertaking if it is to be done right. While it might seem and sound good – some guy in a city growing his own tomatoes and giving the extra produce to his friends - it really isn’t the solution to the problem at hand. It isn’t even beginning to address it,” he asserts. Joshua Muyiwa is a Bengaluru-based poet and writer.
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