Tapoban Rishi Krishi is a heartfelt endeavor of a group of youths of Hooghly district, West Bengal to bring back our traditional process of agriculture.
Tapoban Rishi Krishi’- the name signifies the conventional method of agriculture.
There was an era when farmers of India were the most influential people in a society. Since Indus Valley Civilization, when human being started settling down from their herding culture, agriculture played the most promising role. They cultivated the natural way of growing crops by using natural resources.
No chemical was used by them, neither for its growth as a fertilizer nor for protection as pesticide. Rather natural products like milk, coconut water, cow dung,cow urine, besan (gram flour), neem seeds and leaves, chilly, tobacco leaves etc were being used. They used plows and bulls to cultivate the land. As a result villages of that time was purely self reliant. A series of crop cultivation were in vogue. A proper order of crops to maintain the fertility of soil was maintained by the then farmers.
But the whole situation of farmers is totally different now. The change almost started after the British invasion in India. For more profit, they just destroyed the cropping cycle. As we all know Indigo cultivation what was dreadful for soil fertility was introduced by them and farmers were forced to grow indigo instead of paddy or other food crops.
Thereafter the situation became grave when World War II took place. As we know that after second world war the left over bombs were turned to fertilizers. The German Scientist Justus Freiherr Von Liebig showed that the main component of explosives and fertilizers is same that is Ammonium nitrate. Respective Governments of second world war did not pay interest in the ill effect of long term use of ammonium nitrate in human beings. And the capitalist approach of so called developed countries did not think twice to use these explosives as fertilizer and finally chemical fertilizer industry took the most important place in agriculture as the production intensity of this fertilizer was higher than the conventional fertilizer.
After that ‘Green Revolution’ came in the picture. Norman Borolaug, the American agronomist, became successful to convince the world that high Yielding High Breed seeds are capable of growing more crops in lesser time. Indian government was already going through food shortages during 1960s. So the Government happily introduced these genetically modified seeds and named this process ‘Green revolution’. But side effects of this revolution were not really known to ordinary people and farmers.
- Germination period of these seeds is only one year. So farmers are forced to buy seeds every year.
- Immunity of these plants is not well developed so pesticides are of must use.
- As these plants gives fruits in a short span of time, root is also not well developed, uptake of minerals from soil is not maintained properly. Thus fertilizer from outside is also a must.
- High use of fertilizer makes cementation of soil. As a result water retention capacity of soil become very less. So use of water became higher.
- Again soil became so hard that it is not possible to tillage the land with bull and plow and gradually tractor replace the conventional method.
Finally MNCs replaced the deshi seeds with the genetically modified HYHB seeds. Accordingly poor farmers are left with no option other than buying seeds every year from these Multi National Companies. Read the link.
It is evidenced now that these seeds are able to mutate the human genome and are responsible for premature death.
Thus once privileged farmers became so poor that they are fighting a battle with their profession because pressure of buying medicines, fertilizers, pesticides, seeds every year, arrangements for more irrigation and tractor is so much that suicide left the only option to them.
Here Tapoban Rishi Krishi has taken the oath to bring some change in the lives of poor farmers and is trying hard to bring back the conventional method of Indian Agriculture.
