Aavin's procurement reaching full processing capacity.

The Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation whose brand was Aavin had procured an all time high of 31.84 lakh litres on Tuesday August 22, 2017 while its total capacity of processing stood at 32 lakh litres of milk per day in its 22 big and small dairies to which over 4.40 lakh farmers brought milk daily.  A massive operation indeed!

Milk production is a sure and strong source of income to the producers/ farmers everywhere. There was a time when Aavin refused to procure the excess milk quoting inadequate processing facility with the result the producers protested in many parts of Tamil Nadu by throwing the milk on the main roads. I was cursing the system for want of intelligence and hard work on the part of concerned authorities. 

Luckily the MD of Aavin C .Kamaraj declares that the capacity now exists to convert the excess quantity of milk beyond the consumption limit into skimmed milk powder and butter.

Milk producers should not be discouraged for want of marketing at any cost.

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Landmark Judgment

One of the pathbreaking pronouncements proclaimed by Apex Court of India on "Triple Talaq" issue yesterday the August 22, 2017 will decide once for all that a practice permitted for centuries in the name of personal law cannot continue forever  after it is tested and evaluated in terms of modern day thinking for ensuring gender equality in 21st Century. Change for the better should be welcome not only for the present generation but for the decades and centuries to come.

On a broader scale we can afford to think of only two castes or communities in our country in the long run i.e only male and female and similarly we may have to recognise only one religion that acquires sanctity and sanction from the humanity is the one that declares and implements equality between male and female in all respects.

In the light of above reasoning I too salute and admire the judgment (by a majority of 3:2 in the Constitutional Bench) of the Supreme Court of India for the permanent settlement of fundamental right vis-a-vis the rigours of certain unacceptable practice in the name of religion.

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Floods continue to cause havoc

The North India in addition to Nepal and Assam continue to battle with heavy rains and floods for the last few days. The administrations in those places are busy as usual in relief and rehabilitation to those affected in the disaster. Kaziranga National Park is in deep trouble losing the lives of several animals including rhinos.

Rightly or wrongly we don't seem to use these opportunities to study and collect the data for future plans and programmes to benefit the community in the long run. We tend to forget the sufferings for the present and get along with the routine. It appears to be nobody's business to think on those lines in any part of the country

ONGC & Farmers of Kadiramangalam Village in Thanjavur District

Officers of ONGC claim that the Kadiramangalam villagers have been cooperating with them since the establishment of oil wells in 2008. They are trying to reach out to them and dispel their doubts. They fear that external vested interests are stoking tension in the village. One should hope that they mean business and remove the wrong misunderstanding prevalent among the villagers. Sooner the better to both.

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Initiative to promote collective farming

State government of Tamil Nadu has become wiser and started advising farmers to join together and engage in collective farming given the situation wherein 92% of farmers in the state happen to be small and marginal farmers. On their own these farmers can hardly undertake economical farming. Hence the advice!

Way back in 1990s I too advocated, on the basis of research on the "Economics of Small & Marginal Farmers in Madhya Pradesh", a legislation whereby the size of each holding can be kept not less than five acres by acquisitions from within the families or among the neighbours to be assisted by the bankers.

In view of hardships faced by the farmers in drought-hit or flood-prone areas such a drastic move alone can save them from poverty and indebtedness.

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Vatican turns off 100 fountains as Rome goes dry

I remember to have visited Rome twice in the last two decades. One special feature of this historical city was that water used to flow freely all the time in the year with no tap to close its flow. It was a wonder for me as a person coming from a country where no safe drinking water was available to majority of its citizens despite the self rule by Indians since independence in 1947.

The same city of Rome is facing acute shortage of drinking water forcing its famous fountains to remain dry - an astonishing and shocking development in the Western world like in the case water-deficit countries like India.

Nature seems to have been highly disturbed by human actions in the last one century and more so in the past five decades or so, that regular monsoon and rainfall have become so erratic and unreliable - likely to lead to miserable conditions for human life on this planet. May be a few millions and millions of human beings will start dying for want of water regularly in the days to come unless some miraculous measures are found and corrective measures are put in place.

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Alarming bell on state's granary

Thanks to the research undertaken by a retired professor of the Madras Institute of Development Studies S. Janakrajan covering a period of four decades since 1971 on the Cauvery delta region, regarded as the granary of Tamil Nadu with the assistance of Indian Council of Social Science Research, the following findings are shockingly revealed as expected by some of us for quite sometime :

1)The delta region has shrunk by 20% due to anthropogenic factors such as diversion of land for non-agricultural purposes as well as factors linked to climate change.

2)The drastic reduction in crop cover and a 13-fold increase in wastelands between  1971 and 2014 indicate a worrisome phenomenon.

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