Foreign feathers fill Gujarat coffers

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Farmers in the north of the state take to rearing Emus, the big Australian birds, banking on a business plan that promises average returns, reports Hitesh Ankleshwaria

Mathurbhai Amathabhai Patel used to grow potatoes at his village of Geritha in Mehsana. Apart from this, the farmer used to grow the odd vegetable or two. But since October, 2008, like some other farmers from his state, Mathurbhai started rearing the Emu, the faunal icon of Australia, in captivity. Till date, Mathurbhai has sold 150 Emu eggs for Rs 1500 each.

Two dedicated workers take care of the birds at this north Gujarat farm. They feed the gaggle, treat the birds in their sickness. When an Emu lays an egg, they enter it in the register before packing it in a box. But what did really prompt Mathurbhai to take to Emu rearing? He says, “In September, 2008, the Indian Emu Life Private Ltd had organised a seminar for farmers at Visnagar and informed them about this lucrative business. At this seminar, I came to know about the Australian bird and the good business potential it held. The company invited us to its head quarter in Nasik and we had an in-depth look into the business. This business promised good profits with less hard work. So I started.”

A lot of farmers like Mathurbhai in Gandhinagar, Mehsana and Banaskantha districts of Gujarat took to Emu rearing in 2008. Today more than 25 farmers are engaged in the business. An Emu help line centre has also started functioning at Visnagar town of Mehsana. The Gokul Kisangram Samiti is pre-booking Emus wanted by farmers. As per its trustee and chairman, Jigar Patel, in the last week, three new farmers have registered their names with the body. The organisation receives enquiries from more than ten farmers everyday. Patel was the first farmer who started this business in north Gujarat. He explains the business module.

“To start Emu rearing, 10 pairs of bird are required. It costs about Rs 1,50,000 and requires just half an acre land of land. Fencing, erecting the shed and arranging for water and buying a grass cutter account for another Rs 90,000. This brings the total project cost to around Rs 2,40,000. As per my estimate, total expenses for the Emus' food, medicine, maintenance, insurance (for the first year) and transportation will bring the net total to Rs 7,95,000 for five years. Income from the farm starts getting generated only after one year. Farmers get a market price of Rs 1500 per egg. An average pair of Emus (of the age of 3 years) lays 30 to 35 eggs every season over their 40-year life span. If one pair of Emus lays 15 eggs per year, the total for 10 pairs comes to 150 eggs which will earn a farmer Rs 2,25,000. If one pair lays 25 eggs in its third year and 35 eggs in the fourth and fifth years, the total income will be Rs 16,50,000 for first five years. Deduct the expenses and a farmer can earn Rs 8,55,000 from Emu farming in five years,” says Patel. Clearly, even at its optimistic best, the business model gives just above Rs.200,000 per year as income, with no guarantee that the eggs will get finally sold or not. That seems to be quite an average return when seen in the perspective of the infrastructure, money, and time investment. And the wonder of it is that it's not even clear what the egg is finally supposed to do, apart from giving birth to another Emu.

Yet, Emu rearers do not need to find a market for their products as a six-year contract exists between the Nasik-based Emu Life Private Limited (ELPL) and the Farmer which includes buying that all the bird's body parts, taking back of a live or dead Emu too. “Emu requires meticulous looking after till it becomes one year old. Thereafter things become relaxed as Emus have a robust immune system. However, ELPL provides us training and their doctors come here every three months for routine check-ups. Emus are voracious creatures. You have to feed them corns and green fodder. Apart from these, it is fond of black soil too. This bird can sustain temperature fluctuations ranging between -10 and 60 degree Celsius. To feed an Emu, it costs you Rs 20 per day which is one-third of what would take to feed a cow or a buffalo. Emus are not aggressive but can defend themselves. If a cat, a dog or a snake enters their territory, Emus gather in groups and chases away the encroaching animal and at times, even kill them,” Mathurbhai lets it all out in one breadth.

Patel sheds light on the future of Emu rearing in Gujarat. He draws the whole circle: “Emu rearing started in Maharashtra and spread to Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Right now, all the eggs produced here are sent to the Nasik-based company which processes these eggs for 50-60 days till they hatch. When the chicks grow up to three or four months, they sell them to the farmers. These farmers have to take care of them for one year and then, the female Emus start laying eggs.”

Apparently, every body part of the Emu has an international market. The oil extracted from a dead Emu fetches Rs 3,000 per litre and generally one adult Emu contains four to five litres of it. Each Emu weighs a minimum of 50 kg. Its skin, feathers and nails also have good markets. Farmers send the Emu's body parts to the committee office. Then the office, with ELPL help, sends them out to the market. Emu’s meat is protein-rich but has low fat. Its meat has a good demand in foreign markets. Patel thinks the future of Emu rearing in north Gujarat is bright. “Right now, farmers of north Gujarat have more than 1,000 pairs of Emus and as per our estimate, it will reach 5,000 pairs in one year,” he says.

Farmers of north Gujarat are dreaming of riding the Emus to make quick bucks. nly time will tell how much of it they actually manage to do. One just hopes this whole grandiose plan is not just a multi-level marketing setup in disguise.

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Since the BJD came to power in Orissa 10 years ago, nearly 2500 farmers have embraced death in the face of rising debt and failing crops.

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Last December's unseasonal rains have only made matters worse for the state's already badly battered farm sector

The unseasonal rains that lashed Orissa last December swept away not just 52-year-old farmer Ashok Khatua's standing paddy crop but also his will to live. The suicide was yet another 'living' proof of the worsening agricultural crisis in the state. But who would have imagined that Khatua's son, Sujit, a teacher in a nearby private school, would follow suit and hang himself from the very tree from which he brought down his father's body just hours ago?

It was the morning of December 27. Ashok, a resident of Dhirpur village in Bargarh district, had left for his 3.5-acre farm the previous night. When the father of three did not return until 9 AM, his family members, who were preparing for his daughter's impending wedding, and other villagers launched a search. They fanned out in different directions. Sujit found his father hanging from a tree. In a state of shock, the young man killed himself.

The police recovered the two bodies – the father was lying on the ground, the son was hanging from the tree. The family was intimated, autopsies conducted and the bodies were handed over for the last rites. Amid all this, government officials were conspicuous by their absence.

Harvest time was approaching and the paddy crop in Ashok's farm was ripe. The rains came down without warning and the entire crop was damaged, leaving the debt-ridden farmer completely devastated. Says Anil Khatua, brother of the deceased peasant: “He was so depressed that he stopped talking to us. We thought time would heal him. But it didn't.” Talking about his nephew, Anil says: “He was very attached to his father and could not bear the shock. It was awful. Within minutes, the entire family was destroyed.”

Documents revealed that Ashok had taken a loan of Rs 20,000 from the local co-operative society, besides borrowing Rs 50,000 from relatives. Says Kishori, his widow: “I am aware of the loan. Tell me, how can I ever repay the sum. I have a family to run and a marriageable daughter.” She appealed to the government for help.
In a similar incident in Gopeipali village of Bargarh district, a marginal farmer Shiba Bhoi, 42, committed suicide on December 27 by consuming pesticide in his field after the unseasonal rain damaged his crop. He was rushed to Bargarh Hospital but he died the next evening.

Shiba had less than one acre of land and tilled other farms on a rental basis. He left behind two small daughters and a widow who reside in a dilapidated house in the village. The district administration sanctioned Rs 10,000 in both cases but did nothing more than that. “I have full sympathy for the bereaved families. I have asked my officers to find out how we can include their names in various government schemes,” Bhabagrahi Mishra, Bargarh collector, told TSI.

But the cases of Ashok and Shiba are just the tip of the iceberg. Farmer suicides have become alarmingly common in Orissa. Since no government effort is made to create awareness among farmers about the challenges posed by natural calamities, they are often driven to take desperate measures. Farmer leaders have pilloried the government for not taking prompt action to rescue the poor peasants from the situation created by unseasonal rainfall.

Farmers have rejected the relief package offered by the government – Rs 2000 per hectare. Says Ashok Pradhan, convenor, Western Orissa Farmers Coordination Committee: “We want proper compensation. Rs 2000 per hectare means Rs 800 per acre of land. What purpose can a meagre Rs 800 serve?”

Pradhan suggested that the government should provide a compensation of Rs 15,000 per acre to the affected farmers for both irrigated and non-irrigated land. The farmers' association recently organised demonstration and burnt copies of the relief package as a mark of protest.

Meanwhile, the Union government committee that visited the affected districts after the unseasonal rain is convinced that the damage was ‘extensive’. "The crop loss due to unseasonal rain in December is extensive as well as substantial. We will submit our report to the Centre shortly," Pankaj Kumar, joint secretary in the Union agriculture ministry, who is heading the team, told reporters in Bhubaneswar after meeting Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik and other senior state officials.
Experts attribute Orissa's worsening agrarian crisis to the state government's emphasis on rapid industrialisation at the expense of agriculture. The suicide rate among farmers is mounting in the face of increasing cost of cultivation and debt. “Industry and agriculture are equally important for the growth of the state. The government has to change its attitude if it is committed to the welfare of farmers,” says KC Panda, a retired professor.

Orissa agriculture minister Damodar Rout revealed in the state Assembly that 2,575 farmers have committed suicide during 2000-2008 – 345 in 2002, 365 in 2003, and 378 in 2004. The year-wise farmer suicide figures indicated that the number rose from 199 suicidal deaths in 2000 to 378 in 2004. Subsequently, 254 farmers committed suicide in 2005, 283 in 2006 and 235 in 2007. The figure in 2008 was 260. But the number of cases in 2009 and 2010 is higher because of constant crop loss. Though official figures aren't available, the farmers' body claims over 300 have committed suicide in the past two years.

Meanwhile, Opposition leaders allege the state government is deliberately trying to uproot farmers in order to please a few industrialists. “The government wants to divert agriculture land for industrial use. Farmers do not want to remain in agriculture in these circumstances. So we apprehend a drastic fall in farm output in the coming days,” says Gourahari Mishra, Bargarh district president of BJP. Although political arguments can keep continuing, the fact is that the value of a human life has degraded below what can be imagined. Can monetary support save these lives? The answer is unanimous - yes! The pity of it is - nobody's giving.

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Prakash Kaur, 60, began life as a foundling. Today she is mother to 60-odd abandoned girls in a unique shelter in Jalandhar, Punjab

IIPM Mumbai Campus

The woman behind the home is Prakash Kaur, who was herself left on the streets as a baby 60 years ago. Since 1993, she has dedicated her life to the noble but onerous mission of rescuing unwanted and unclaimed newborn girls and giving them a secure home and future.

Today, Unique Home for Girls has 60-odd residents who call Prakash Kaur mother. “They are my own children,” the lady says. “They are never made to feel like abandoned children.”

As we walk around the home, it is easy to see that her claim is quite well-founded. Even as her ‘family’ expands and her responsibilities grow, Prakash Kaur’s fount of maternal compassion shows no signs of drying up.

She has touched the lives of many who’ve been cruelly shunned by their own. Siya was only a few hours old when she was found in a drain, wrapped in a black polythene bag. Reva was a newborn when her parents decided to dump her near the highway off Kapurthala. Razia and Rabiya were just a few days old when they were discovered in the fields outside Jalandhar.

These girls have all found shelter in Unique Home, where they now enjoy the real family experience that their pitiless parents chose to deprive them of simply because of their gender. The girls who live here range from the age of four days to 19 years.

Unique Home is run by a trust named after Bhai Ghanayya Ji, a disciple of Guru Gobind Singh. The trust aims to raise these children as healthy individuals and arm them with all the social skills and educational qualifications that they need to face life on their own terms. The girls could not have found a better person than Prakash Kaur for the job of providing them with support and succour.

Most of Unique Home’s inmates arrive here as hapless, barely alive foundlings. So they have no recollections of how they are brought here. But those that have grown up in the life-affirming warmth of this home are proud that they belong here.

Under Prakash Kaur’s care and tutelage, these girls are all well adjusted individuals willing and able to take their rightful place in a society that still seems to harbour a strong aversion to children of their gender.

Prakash Kaur is acutely aware of the challenges that lie before her, but she has faith. “Yeh uparwaale ka kaam hai. Jab ussney yeh zimmedaari di hai to himmat bhi wohi dega. Jab aaj tak mujhe koi mushkil nahin aayee to aagey bhi nahin aayegi. Neki key kaam mein kabhi koi rukawat nahin aati,” she says. She is obviously getting on in years but she still retains the strength to make chapatis for all the inmates of the home three times a day and seven days a week.

The first thing that strikes one in Unique Home is a small hatched box near the entrance. It is called the “cradle”. Flip open the hatch and you see a shelf built into the wall. When a rescued child is placed on the shelf, it sets off an alarm that tells the staff that they have a new girl to take care of. When it comes to christening the new arrivals, names are drawn from all the religions of India. So at Unique Home, girls have Hindu, Muslim and Christian and Sikh names and faith has no restrictions.

Although we visited Unique Home without any prior notice, Prakash Kaur ensured that we were made to feel at home. Not surprising at all coming from a lady who has dedicated her life to dispelling a bit of the darkness that engulfs Punjab, indeed all of India. The girls brought to Unique Home grow up with a sense of belonging. This is the only home they know.

For a home that houses 60-odd girls, the place looks a bit too small. The rather cramped space has limited amenities for the girls, including three small rooms that serve as bedroom, dining area and playroom, in addition to a small kitchen and an office for visitors.

The room that is meant for infants has three big cradles. Each has four to five babies sleeping in them. Unique Home has now acquired a new site and expansion plans are in place.

But living space is the least of the home’s problems for the hearts here are big. This is like a huge family where the older girls take care of the younger ones. We are told by the founder that the girls go to good English medium schools like Saint Mary’s in Mussoorie. A few have since been married into suitable homes. But Prakash Kaur’s responsibility does not end there.

She continues to keep a watch over the girls even after they are married. She fights for their rights if the in-laws prove to be difficult. Take the case of former Unique Home inmate Alka. When her husband died prematurely, her in-laws grabbed all her property and threw her out of the house. Prakash Kaur intervened and fought tooth and nail. She eventually managed to secure for Alka her rightful share in the family property.

So far Prakash Kaur has organised the marriages of 17 of the Unique Home inmates. While a few of these girls graduated from college before they got married, the remaining tied the knot after passing out of high school. However, several of the older girls here have decided not to marry and instead dedicate themselves, like Prakash Kaur, to the service of Unique Home.

April 24 is a very special day at Unique Home. It is the day when the children here collectively celebrate their birthday. A huge 100-kg cake is cut and the day is marked by much merriment. That apart, once every year, during the summer holidays, the inmates of Unique Home go on a trip to Darjeeling.

On our visit to the home, we ate lunch with the children. The food was simple but delicious: rice, chapatis and aloo gobhi. Prakash Kaur made fresh chapatis for all the 60 children.

“We don’t want to give our kids up for adoption. People come to us but we refuse,” says Prakash Kaur. Although she did not give us any specific details, she told us that she knows of many cases in which adopted girls have been ill treated.

Prakash Kaur herself has no idea who her parents were. She was found abandoned and grew up in a Nari Niketan. She describes the work she does today as “the lord’s work”.

Asked if she ever faced any mistreatment in the Nari Niketan where she grew up, she smiles and says: “I will never allow my daughters to work as maids anywhere.”

The most essential part of this home is that the children are aware of the fact that their real parents have abandoned them because they are obsessed with boys. But this poisonous truth has only strengthened their resolve to prove themselves. Sheeba, who studies in a convent school in Mussoorie, wants to be a successful neurosurgeon.

“I want my real mother to know that the daughter she threw out of her life is well established. I want to be very famous. I want to prove to her that girls are not a burden,” she says. Sheeba has always stood first in her class with A-plus grades. She is determined to make it to a good medical college.

Lucy is 19 years old. She wants to be a professor of English. “I believe that education is the only way forward in this society which discriminates against girl children,” she says.

Punjab has one of India’s most skewed sex ratios. The percentage of women in the state’s population keeps dipping every year. A growing shortage of marriageable girls has forced men here to find partners in different cultures and states.

“When French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni came to India, they prayed for a boy. I was shocked. I used to think that Westerners treat both genders equally. He could have asked for a girl. It would have sent out a message to the people of India. It’s rather sad,” says Prakash Kaur. The French first couple prayed for a son at the Fatehpur Sikri dargah of Sufi saint Salim Chishti.

Female foeticide is on the rise, especially among the educated class and in higher strata of society. It has assumed alarming proportions. According to NGOs working with issues related to women, every year, 10 lakh cases of female foeticide take place in the country with the help of gender determination tests. The death of young girls in India exceed those of young boys by over 300,000 each year and every 6th infant death is specifically due to gender discrimination.

According to Anjalee Shenoy of Sama Resource Centre for Women and Health, new techniques like PGD (pre-implant genetic diagnosis), a method that involves producing embryos through IVF, cannot just help you decide the gender of the child but the colour of skin and hair. And there is no effective law in place right now to stop this practice. “This falls under the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, but it is going undetected,” says Shenoy.

But there is hope yet. If only Prakash Kaur’s selfless spirit would rub off on society at large.

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End this culture rightaway

Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri Dean Business School IIPM

The evil of violence extends beyond determining who gets to enjoy power, it destroys a society

The sporadic but widespread bloodshed in West Bengal today is causing genuine worries among commoners as most of the victims or casualties are youths, bubbling with energy and potential but nipped in the bud by a ruthlessly violent political machine. They are being killed in the villages and towns, on the top of the hills or in the middle of the jungles, inside colleges and immediate neighbourhoods. People play the role of onlookers as if the young people – killed or injured – do not belong to the society.

The malaise is deeper than the episodes where social conscience is in a semi-comatose state. The society is in grave jeopardy. The disease of inequality, corruption and misuse of power is ruling the roost. Both state and non-state actors have used violence like it will bring magic solution to all problems. The somewhat normal life and livelihood of people in the villages, whose lives have been caught up in this conflict, have been shattered.

The loss to the society has two dimensions that interpenetrate each other in terms of tragedy. Certainly, those who were killed for no fault of themselves cause a loss to the micro-society they lived in. But the damage is more penetrating for the youths that were not killed but related to the dead souls. The differential social impact on the extinguished and the combusting ones makes its unstable presence felt here. One pathos pierce another, along with avoidable escalation of mutual hatred that hampers the social texture of normal times. It’s not that just the academic milieu gets vitiated; the we-feeling among the youths is seriously fractured.

These acts of bloodsheds, in the guise of intra-party and inter-party rivalry or by any other name, are not natural as such violent episodes are aberrations in normal societal life. Lost are social assets in most of these deaths. Political parties are trying to cash in on these killings. The more the number of deaths, the more buoyant get their political and material benefits, albeit in the short term.

When those youths were alive, political leaders and the parties never knew them. After their deaths, political parties politicise the funerals of the victims, organise processions with dead bodies and make them martyrs in their political interests. Even if they do not openly preach and teach violence, they are not shy of reaping the profits of violence. In fact, all political parties have ‘blood on their hands’ today. They not only reap the harvest of deaths but instigate and pitch in their part. It is the political leaders who create malice among members of Gen-Next and make them kill one another.

They are engrossed in shameless ‘parliamentary cretinism’, seldom caring for the society of electorates or the well-being of the youths in general. These people did not matter so much when they were living than what their blood-stained bodies are worth. The society is at dangerous crossroads though the political class has already crossed it. The wounds are inflicted on the whole society and the entire society bleeds. And for that, we the elders, the parents, the common people – who are sometimes afraid to raise their voices in fear of state reprisal – want this to be stopped. We demand that all the political parties give patient hearings to what we have to say.

Use of violence as a means of grabbing power is not just true for West Bengal. It’s a global phenomenon. Violence is made into a culture. Now a large part of the world is looking back at the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, who never compromised with violence even at the cost of the country’s freedom. He once said, “I cannot teach you violence as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one, even at the cost of your life.”

Political consciousness today is a vague and misleading concept as the democratic polity is injured and social commitment is tragically scarce. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the conscientious ex-Governor of West Bengal, stated very aptly: “Violence is crime’s signature. And that signature, in its many twists and loops, grows. And it often becomes oblique.” Violence is a hindrance to democratic life and normal social growth. It is time to disapprove of violence in every form. Violence is introduced by the state, we have learnt that from history and are witnessing the same in our daily lives. Anything that throttles the freedom of life – not just freedom of expression, association or the Press – is to be opposed. But that protest should have no room for violence but should be conducted in a benign and communicative way.

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