Why Green Revolution
The world's worst recorded food disaster happened in 1943 in British-ruled
Nevertheless, when the British left
However, the term "Green Revolution" is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers. In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution.
The term "Green Revolution" is a general one that is applied to successful agricultural experiments in many
What was the Green Revolution in
There were three basic elements in the method of the Green Revolution:
(1) Continued expansion of farming areas;
(2) Double-cropping existing farmland;
(3) Using seeds with improved genetics.
Continued expansion of farming areas
As mentioned above, the area of land under cultivation was being increased right from 1947. But this was not enough in meeting with rising demand. Other methods were required. Yet, the expansion of cultivable land also had to continue. So, the Green Revolution continued with this quantitative expansion of farmlands. However, this is NOT the most striking feature of the Revolution.
Double-cropping existing farmland
Double-cropping was a primary feature of the Green Revolution. Instead of one crop season per year, the decision was made to have two crop seasons per year. The one-season-per-year practice was based on the fact that there is only natural monsoon per year. This was correct. So, there had to be two "monsoons" per year. One would be the natural monsoon and the other an artificial 'monsoon.'
The artificial monsoon came in the form of huge irrigation facilities. Dams were built to arrest large volumes of natural monsoon water which were earlier being wasted. Simple irrigation techniques were also adopted.
Using seeds with superior genetics
This was the scientific aspect of the Green Revolution. The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (which was established by the British in 1929 but was not known to have done any significant research) was re-organized in 1965 and then again in 1973. It developed new strains of high yield value (HYV) seeds, mainly wheat and rice but also millet and corn. The most noteworthy HYV seed was the K68 variety for wheat. The credit for developing this strain goes to Dr. M.P. Singh who is also regarded as the hero of
Statistical Results of the Green Revolution
| (1) | The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79. This established |
| | |
| (2) | Yield per unit of farmland improved by more than 30 per cent between 1947 (when |
| | |
| (3) | The crop area under HYV varieties grew from seven per cent to 22 per cent of the total cultivated area during the 10 years of the Green Revolution. More than 70 per cent of the wheat crop area, 35 per cent of the rice crop area and 20 per cent of the millet and corn crop area, used the HYV seeds. |
Economic results of the Green Revolution
| (1) | Crop areas under high-yield varieties needed more water, more fertilizer, more pesticides, fungicides and certain other chemicals. This spurred the growth of the local manufacturing sector. Such industrial growth created new jobs and contributed to the country's GDP. |
| | |
| (2) | The increase in irrigation created need for new dams to harness monsoon water. The water stored was used to create hydro-electric power. This in turn boosted industrial growth, created jobs and improved the quality of life of the people in villages. |
| | |
| (3) | |
| | |
| (4) | Some developed countries, especially |
Sociological results of the Green Revolution
The Green Revolution created plenty of jobs not only for agricultural workers but also industrial workers by the creation of lateral facilities such as factories and hydro-electric power stations as explained above.
Political results of the Green Revolution
| (1) | |
| | |
| (2) | The Green Revolution was one factor that made Mrs. Indira Gandhi (1917-84) and her party, the Indian National Congress, a very powerful political force in India (it would however be wrong to say that it was the only reason). |
Indira Gandhi
Indira was born on November 19, 1917 in her grandfather's house in
The
1942 Indira and Feroze were married. 1947 Indira became her father's hostess as he leads
1964 her father died, his successor was Lal Bhadur Shartri. Mr. Shartri died after two years in office. In January 1966 the Congress party leaders chose Mrs. Gandhi to be Prime Minister. She has led the country for sixteen years. Her life was part of the story of modern
She was killed by two of her bodyguards. She was sixty-two years old.
No one ever doubted the courage of the remarkable woman who had sometimes been called "The Empress of India" and no one ever doubted that with her death a chapter of
1998, by Sabina, third grade
Limitations of the Green Revolution
| (1) | Even today, |
| | However, in today's globalised economic scenario, 100 per cent self-sufficiency is not considered as vital a target as it was when the world political climate was more dangerous due to the Cold War. |
| | |
| (2) | |
| | |
| (3) | Nothing like the Bengal Famine can happen in |
| | |
| (4) | The Green Revolution cannot therefore be considered to be a 100 percent success. |
PM promises 2nd green revolution
March 07, 2005 17:41 IST
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday promised rural India a 'New Deal' to reverse decline in farm investments through increased funds for agricultural research, irrigation and wasteland development.
He said the government was committed to launching the second green revolution.
"Our government has been voted to power on the wave of agrarian distress, caused partly by the failure of the market and partly by the failure of the state," Singh said while inaugurating the
"The new deal is intended to reverse the decline in investment in agriculture," he said.
The Prime Minister said an important dimension of the new deal is aimed at ensuring food and nutritional security of the people, while at the same time augmenting farm incomes and employment through launching of the second green revolution.
"Our government will be launching a National Horticulture Mission that is aimed, in part, at stimulating this second green revolution in the range of new crops and commodities," he said.
The Prime Minister said with more advances in science and technology in areas like biotechnology coming from the private sector, it was important to ensure availability of these products to the poor farmers.
"The challenge is how to encourage this creativity, this innovativeness and at the same time to ensure that new products and new processes will be far affordable for the vast majority of farmers who live on the edges of subsistence," he said.
Green Revolution usually refers to the transformation of agriculture that began in 1945. One significant factor came at the request of the Mexican government to establish an agricultural research station to develop more varieties of wheat that could be used to feed the rapidly growing population of the country. In 1943
The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former USAID director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies and said, "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."
History
With the experience of agricultural development begun in Mexico by Norman Borlaug in 1943 judged as a success, the Rockefeller Foundation sought to spread the Green Revolution to other nations. The Office of Special Studies in Mexico became an informal international research institution in 1959, and in 1963 it formally became CIMMYT, The International Maize and
In 1961
Famine in India, once accepted as inevitable, has not returned since the introduction of Green Revolution agriculture.
In 1960, the Government of the Republic of the
In 1970, foundation officials proposed a worldwide network of agricultural research centers under a permanent secretariat. This was further supported and developed by the World Bank; on May 19, 1971, with the FAO, IFAD and UNDP as co-sponsors, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research was established. CGIAR, has added many research centers throughout the world.
CGIAR has responded, at least in part, to criticisms of Green Revolution methodologies. This began in the 1980s, and mainly was a result of pressure from donor organizations Methods like Agroecosystem Analysis and Farming System Research have been adopted to gain a more holistic view of agriculture. Methods like Rapid Rural Appraisal and Participatory Rural Appraisal have been adopted to help scientists understand the problems faced by farmers and even give farmers a role in the development process.
There have been numerous attempts to introduce the successful concepts from the Mexican and Indian projects into Africa. These programs have generally been less successful, for a number of reasons. Reasons cited include widespread corruption, insecurity, a lack of infrastructure, and a general lack of will on the part of the governments. Yet environmental factors, such as the availability of water for irrigation, the high diversity in slope and soil types in one given area are also reasons why the Green Revolution is not so successful in Africa A recent program in western
Agricultural production and food security
The projects within the Green Revolution spread technologies that had already existed, but had not been widely used outside of industrialized nations. These technologies included pesticides, irrigation projects, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and improved crop varieties developed through the conventional (that is, not using biotechnology), science-based breeding methods available at the time.
The novel technological development of the Green Revolution was the production of what some referred to as “miracle seeds.
Agronomists bred cultivars of maize, wheat, and rice that are generally referred to as HYVs or “high-yielding varieties.” HYVs have an increased nitrogen-absorbing potential compared to other varieties. Since cereals that absorbed extra nitrogen would typically lodge, or fall over before harvest, semi-dwarfing genes were bred into their genomes. A Japanese dwarf wheat cultivar (Norin 10 wheat), which was sent to Washington by Cecil Salmon, was instrumental in developing Green Revolution wheat cultivars. IR8, the first widely implemented HYV rice to be developed by IRRI, was created through a cross between an Indonesian variety named “Peta” and a Chinese variety named “Dee-geo-woo-gen.”
With advances in molecular genetics, the mutant genes responsible for Arabidopsis genes(GA 20-oxidase ga1ga1-3wheat reduced height genes(Rht) and a rice semidwarf gene (sd1) were cloned. These were identified as gibberellin biosynthesis genes or cellular signaling component genes. Stem growth in the mutant background is significantly reduced leading to the dwarf phenotype. Photosynthetic investment in the stem is reduced dramatically as the shorter plants are inherently more stable mechanically. Assimilates become redirected to grain production, amplifying in particular the effect of chemical fertilizers on commercial yield....
HYVs significantly outperform traditional varieties in the presence of adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. In the absence of these inputs, traditional varieties may outperform HYVs.
Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations between the years 1961 – 1985 Yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily during that period. The production increases can be attributed roughly equally to irrigation, fertilizer, and seed development, at least in the case of Asian rice. While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input into the process (that is, the energy that must be expended to produce a crop) has also increased at a greater rate,S o that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum products. Proponents of the Peak Oil theory fear that a future decline in oil and gas production would lead to a decline in food production or even a Malthusian catastrophe.
The effects of the Green Revolution on global food security are difficult to understand because of the complexities involved in food systems.
The world population has grown by about four billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and most believe that, without the Revolution, there would be greater famine and malnutrition. India saw annual wheat production rise from 10 million tons in the 1960s to 73 million in 2006.[ The average person in the developing world consumes roughly 25% more calories per day now than before the Green Revolution. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.
The production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are widely credited with having helped to avoid widespread famine, and for feeding billions of people.
Criticisms of the Green Revolution
Malthusian criticism of the Green Revolution
Some criticisms generally involve some variation of the Malthusian principle of population. Such concerns often revolve around the idea that the Green Revolution is unsustainable, and argue that humanity is currently in a state of overpopulation with regards to the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth.
Malthusian predictions have frequently failed to materialize. In 1798 Thomas Malthus made his prediction of impending famine. The world's population had doubled by 1923 and then had doubled again by 1973 without fulfilling Malthus' prediction. Malthusian Paul R. Ehrlich, in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, said that India would never feed itself and claimed that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980" and "Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs. Ehrlich's predictions failed to materialize when
Is food production actually related to famine?
To some modern Western sociologists and writers, increasing food production is not synonymous with increasing food security, and is only part of a larger equation. For example, Harvard professor Amartya Sen claimed large historic famines were not caused by decreases in food supply, but by socioeconomic dynamics and a failure of public action. However, economist Peter Bowbrick has accused Sen of misrepresenting historical data, telling outright lies and being wrong on his theory of famines In fact Bowbrick argues that Sen's views coincide with that of the Bengal government at the time of the Bengal famine of 1943 and the policies Sen advocates failed to relieve the famine
Food production versus quality of diet
Some have challenged the value of the increased food production of Green Revolution agriculture. Miguel A. Altieri, one of the pioneers of agroecology and peasant-advocate, writes that the comparison between traditional systems of agriculture and Green Revolution agriculture has been unfair, because Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains, while traditional agriculture usually incorporates polycultures. This production of monoculture cereal crops is frequently used for export, feed for animals, or conversion into biofuel. According to Emile Frison from Biodiversity International, it has also lead to a change in dietary habits, as less people suffer hunger, but many are affected by malnutrition e.g. iron-deficiency or vitamin A-deficiency. Currently about 60% of annual deaths of children under the age of five are related to malnutrition Additionally, some claim traditional systems of agriculture that were displaced by the Green Revolution such as the chinampas in Mexico or raised-field rice farming in Asia can be highly-productive ritics point out that these traditional forms of agriculture produced less food than Green Revolution crops, and were prone to famine, as evidenced by the frequency of famine in these communities. This argument does not take into account the amount of land that was cleared or irrigated for the green revolution, and the latest statistics that show a major drop in the productivity of land that has been intensively farmed for the past 30 years due to desertification and other forms of land degradation.
There are several claims about how the Green Revolution may have decreased food security for some people. One such claim involves the shift of subsistence-oriented cropland to cropland oriented towards production of grain for export and/or animal feed. For example, the Green Revolution replaced much of the land used for pulses that fed Indian peasants for wheat, which did not make up a large portion of the peasant diet.In regards to the quality of the high yield rice (HYR) which was introduced to poverty ridden Asian countries, such as in the Philippines, which began in 1964, the flavor was found to be inferior, and was considered more glutinous and less savory than their native varieties. This resulted in a lower than average market value price. The introduction of Pesticides involved in rice production has further impacted the diets of the locals by poisoning and killing off the fish and weedy green vegetables that traditionally co-existed in the rice patties that were nutritious food sources in the diets of the Philippino farmer
Social impacts AND Political impacts
The Green Revolution is unpopular among many leftists because of its context within the Cold War. A major critic of the Green Revolution, the
The transition from traditional agriculture in which inputs were generated on-farm to Green Revolution agriculture, which required the purchase of inputs, lead to the widespread establishment of rural credit institutions. Smaller farmers often went into debt, which in many cases result in a loss of their farmland. The increased level of mechanization on larger farms made possible by the Green Revolution removed a large source of employment from the rural economy. Because wealthier farmers had better access to credit and land, the Green Revolution increased class disparities. Because some regions were able to adopt Green Revolution agriculture more readily than others (for political or geographical reasons), interregional economic disparities increased as well. Many small farmers are hurt by the dropping prices resulting from increased production overallThe new economic difficulties of small holder farmers and landless farm workers led to increased rural-urban migration. The increase in food production led to a cheaper food for urban dwellers, and the increase in urban population increased the potential for industrialization
In the most basic sense, the Green Revolution was a product of globalization as evidenced in the creation of international agricultural research centers that shared information, and with transnational funding from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and United States Agency for International Development USAID. Additionally, the inputs required in Green Revolution agriculture created new markets for seed and chemical corporations, many of which were based in the
Green Revolution agriculture relies upon extensive use of pesticides, which are necessary to limit the high levels of pest damage that inevitably occur in monoculture - the practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area. Additionally, improper and excessive use of pesticides by untrained subsistence farmers in
Norman Borlaug's reply to the alternative interpretations of the Green Revolution
Norman Borlaug has dismissed most claims of critics, but does take certain concerns seriously. He states that his work has been "a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia". Of environmental lobbyists he has stated, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in
CORRESPONDENCE
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 92, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2007 157
India’s second green revolution needs to transform the drylands
The President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
has recently called for a second green
revolution, while inaugurating the triennial
conference on Global Forum on Agricultural
Research at New Delhi on 9
November 2006. This is not the first time
that he has spoken about this issue. Three
years ago, he had outlined the applications
of technological innovations to meet
future foodgrain needs demanded by the
increasing population growth1. By 2020,
India has got to increase productivity
above 340 million tonnes of foodgrains in
view of population growth, so the President
appealed to agricultural scientists and
technologists to work hard to double the
productivity of available land in view of
less area being available for cultivation,
with limited water supply and diminishing
number of available farmers.
Interestingly, the timing of the President’s
statement coincides with the recent
Living Planet Report published by
the World Wide Fund for Nature2. The
report portrays a grim fact on the changing
state of global biodiversity and the
pressure on the biosphere arising from
excessive human consumption of natural
resources. The report warns that people are
turning resources into waste, faster than
nature can turn waste back into resources
and by 2050, humanity will demand resources
double the rate at which the earth
can generate them2. Thus the President’s
reference to double the foodgrains productivity
by 2020 is timely and deserves
serious attention.
Five major factors that determine the
extent of global overshoot or demand on
bio-capacity include population, consumption
of goods/services per person, resource
use intensity, bio-productive areas, and
bio-productivity per hectare. India has to
make appropriate plans with persistence
to eliminate overshoot of the above five
factors. One crucial aspect to eliminate
overshoot of bio-productive areas is to
transform India’s vast barren, rural drylands.
Undoubtedly, India is a land of villages
with 700 million people living in over
600,000 villages, many in the enormous
drylands. No developmental strategy can
succeed that neglects the rural drylands
that occur in 177 districts or 56% of India’s
total geographic area, covering States such
as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh
and Tamil Nadu3. The drylands in these
states have to be targetted to increase productivity
of foodgrains, if India has to
succeed in a second green revolution, without
creating serious negative consequences
to natural environment.
During a recent visit to Dahod district,
a major dryland area in Gujarat along the
Rajasthan border, I witnessed the contributions
of a local non-government agency
named ‘Sadguru’ (Sanskrit meaning, ‘true
teacher’) in transforming drylands by
building cost-effective check dams and
lift-irrigation systems to increase productivity
of agricultural crops4. During the last
few decades, the small non-profit agency
has assisted several villages in the drylands
of western India to build simple check
dams to harvest rainwater. Water saved
through the check dams apparently transformed
the infertile drylands into productive
agricultural lands in a short period of
time, which ultimately alleviated poverty
among some rural tribal communities.
Tribal cooperatives manage the check dams
and farmers pay a modest sum for the
use of water to irrigate their fields4. This
system can be followed in the South Indian
States such as Tamil Nadu, where the
government provides free electricity to
farmers in the name of increasing agricultural
productivity and reducing poverty.
But the free electricity provision often
leads to excessive wastage and draining
groundwater reserves.
Check dams are not new in India. In fact,
the first Grand Anicut, also known as the
‘Kallanai’ in Tamil, was built by an ancient
Chola king Karikalan in the Kaveri
river delta, Tamil Nadu during the second
century. It was based on a simple checkdam
design. It is the oldest water-diversion
structure in the world still in use,
with a superb dam-building design. This
design was later adopted by the British
irrigation engineer, Arthur Cotton, who
built various dams and irrigation structures
across India during the British occupation.
India has pioneered in developing
simple, innovative technologies to harvest
water and to boost agriculture centuries
ago. Hence transforming the drylands to
achieve a second green revolution will
not be a daunting task if India’s ingenious
past is understood precisely by scientists,
policy-makers and politicians.
1. Abdul Kalam, A. P. J., 2003, http://www.
indianembassy.org/presidnt/jan25_03.html.
2. Living Planet Report 2006, WWF International,
Switzerland, 2006.
3. Shah, M., Banerji, D., Vijayshankar, P. S.
and Ambasta, P., India’s Drylands. Tribal
Societies and Development through Environmental
Regeneration, Oxford University
Press, Mumbai, 1998.
4. Jagawat, H., Transforming the Drylands,
The Sadguru Story of Western India, India
Research Press, New Delhi, 2005.
GOVINDASAMY AGORAMOORTHY
Department of Pharmacy,
Tajen University,
Yanpu, Pingtung 907, Taiwan
e-mail: agoram@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
Disappearing beaches of Kerala
Beaches are the most important geomorphological
features of a coastal state. They
are one of the most eye-catching and captivating
destinations of tourists throughout
the world. Nearly two-thirds of the world
population live within a narrow belt directly
landward from the ocean edge and many
of them depend on the bounties of the
sea for their livelihood. The uses are innumerable:
swimming, surfing, sunbathing,
beachcombing, walking, jogging,
fishing, etc. Good beaches attract thousands
of visitors and are economically important
not only to the communities living
nearby but to the whole country as well.
Beaches are of great economic importance
both for recreational use and as a
buffer zone to protect land and the properCORRESPONDENCE
CURRENT SCIENCE, 158 VOL. 92, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2007
ties on it from wave attack. However, it
seems that many coastal states fail to understand
the value and importance of this
natural divide between the huge volume of
the sea water and the land. It is both sad
as well as alarming to see this gift of nature
slowly disappearing or even shrinking
in size.
The growing population pressure is of
late asserting itself on the environment,
and the beaches are no exception to feel
the full impact of this. Concern over
beaches has been at an all-time high
throughout the world due to their deteriorating
condition and many countries have
adopted plans and policies for coastal
management.
Kerala is well endowed with its natural
bounty and could ascend to the world
tourism map because of its beaches, despite
its poor infrastructure. The tourism
industry of the state is dependent for
most part on sun, sand and sea. The state
has ~600 km long coastline and 90% of it
has well-developed sandy beaches. Unfortunately
beaches have not been perceived
as areas needing management,
protection and funding rather than as a
permanent feature of the landscape.
However with increased population
pressure man started taking on nature and
even encroaching on its domain. The sea
and its dynamism are discussed only during
the monsoon season when it starts reclaiming
what is being grabbed from its
bosom by the very people who depend on
it for their livelihood. Governments have
conveniently forced the public to believe
that the sea wall is the only way to escape
from the fury of the ocean. As a result,
all along the Kerala coast a huge
wall has been constructed almost uninterruptedly,
letting the sea destroy it every
year, thereby littering these already
strained beaches. There is no scientific
evidence to suggest that the sea will encroach
the whole land if there is no protection.
An honest and impartial assessment
of this draining of public coffers and
slow killing of our natural resources is
the need of the hour.
The name ‘sea wall’ for ‘boulder wall’
itself is a misnomer because sea wall is a
scientific coastal engineering structure
built along the coastal seas to protect the
properties in the coastal areas. The effectiveness
of such scientific engineering structures
is highly debated across the world.
The Kerala sea walls are, however, constructed
just by stacking up all the boulders
even without estimating the durability
of these structures and their ability to
withstand the wave energy. The fact remains
that these structures built along the
coast, in fact, augment the process of
coastal erosion.
Studies have shown that any structure
built right on the beach prevents beach
accretion and not the beach erosion.
Man’s alteration of the shorelines especially
by construction on the beaches will
create unnatural water currents. They
have an adverse effect on beaches undergoing
retreat, but the effect is more pronounced
on beaches undergoing long
time rapid shoreline retreat. It is found
that sea walls influence the beaches in
various ways. Swash that is reflected by
a sea wall in a sea-walled beach is directed
seaward several seconds earlier
than the swash on the adjacent unwalled
beach increasing backwash duration and
velocity. This means that at high tide when
waves hit against the walls waves reflect
back towards the ocean with much more
energy than if the wall is not there. These
reflected waves often cause the sand
beach in front of the sea wall to erode
twice as fast as an adjacent beach without
a sea wall. As the beach continues to
erode, the sea wall may also block natural
replenishment of sand from dunes or
cliffs behind the wall. Reflected waves
and the diminished sand supply may also
degrade the sand bars and destroy the surf.
The underwater part of the beach profile
will become steep and deep, sometimes
allowing the waves to reach the sea wall
without even breaking. Thus, man makes
the sea wall and the sea breaks it.
The increased height, energy and current
that are assembled in the near-shore
areas are managed in a positive way by
healthy beaches. It can engage a large
storm with minimal damage. Any coastal
construction like a sea wall, a groin, break
waters or ports should be made only after
properly understanding their impact on
the immediate beaches as well as on the
adjoining coasts. Beaches are the constantly
changing formations and any sea
defenses built on or near them will influence
this natural process. Beaches are the
places where the sea dissipates its pentup
energy. The million-dollar question then
arises: How will we prevent the coastal
erosion? Damaging effects of sea waves
especially during monsoon season cannot
be prevented just by armoring our shoreline
with rock boulders. They only make
those who live in the coastal areas feel
that they are protected. Disastrous effects
of monsoon waves in fact can be minimized
by widening our beaches and by
not disturbing the natural process of accretion
and erosion. There may be some
objections to this solution as there is lot
of loss of life and property every year
due to sea erosion. But the fact of the
matter is that we fail to understand where
exactly the sea is and where the land is.
Though the coastal zone regulation act
clearly prohibits settlement within 500 m
from the coastline, this zone is most
densely populated in most parts of the
state with settlements right on the
beaches and berms.
Sea walls are not at all the solution.
Man cannot fight with nature; rather he
should learn to live harmoniously with it.
The solution to this problem is very limited.
One must understand the fact that beach
and berm are parts of the sea. People living
in close vicinity of the sea must be
evacuated. Man’s property must be away
from that of the sea by earmarking a
buffer zone between the land and the sea,
where habitation should be strictly prohibited.
For this, a two-way mapping method
of coastal area is required. A wave inundation
line and monsoon inundation line
should be drawn which should be exclusively
demarcated as a ‘no-encroachment’
area. This evacuation will be more cost
effective and life saving than the annual
ritual of sea wall construction which is
draining our financial resources as well
as natural security. The governments
should think of constructing community
apartments out of the demarcated buffer
zones for the communities who will be
evacuated. This will improve their living
condition as well. These are the only feasible
solutions if we want to escape the
fury of nature. Killer tsunami waves are
just an eye-opener and no warning system
can save us from such natural calamities.
It is not only our property which should
be protected; our finite heritages like
beaches need protection because this
planet we owe to our next generation.
N. M. SHAREEF
Geological Survey of India,
Mangalore 575 001, India
e-mail: shareef_n123@rediffmail.com
CORRESPONDENCE
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 92, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2007 159
Ayurveda: where are we?
This correspondence is in support of the
earlier one by Srivastava1. Despite the fact
that Ayurveda is one of the old systems
of medicine and the belief that herbal
preparations have no side effects (unlike
many conventional treatments), concern is
now growing in the international community
about its efficacy and safety2.
Therefore, a threat to the wide acceptance
of this traditional Indian system of medicine
is expected. Obviously, there is need
for vigorous research on Ayurveda and/or
on herbal medicine. Although a good
deal of research is going on, not much
scientific and medical documentation is
presently available in this field, particularly
on the clinical aspect. In the recent
past when a PUBMED search from 1950
and EMBASE search from 1974 were
made using keywords ‘Ayurvedic drugs’
and limited to clinical trials, reports with
title and abstract were found to be meagre,
clearly indicating an urgency of serious
and systematic medical research on
herbal preparations. Srivastava1 suggests
one aspect, namely that most of the ingredients
have to be fully identified, so
that more effective medicines can be produced.
Safety is also another important
issue. In animal models we have found
that some of our traditional herbal extracts
might prove to be toxic in higher
doses3,4. Therefore, a strict quality control
measure has to be followed. Let us
not forget that we must have logic and
scientific evidence for the continued use
of herbal medicines. In fact, in order to
create a better understanding and faith
among the consumers and the researchers,
everyone concerned with complementary
medicine must understand that Ayurveda
will not have a promising future unless
standard cost effective drugs are produced
with high efficacy and little or no adverse
effect. Certainly, a systematic, collaborative
and scientific approach is the
need of the hour.
1. Srivastava, R. C., Curr. Sci., 2006, 91,
1125.
2. Ernst, E., Community Pract., 2006, 79,
333–336.
3. Panda, S. and Kar, A., Curr. Sci., 1998, 74,
284–285.
4. Kar, A. and Panda, S., Rec. Prog. Med.
Plants, 2005, 10, 419–426.
A. KAR
Complementary Medicine,
25 Victoria Park Road,
University of Exeter and Plymouth,
Exeter EX2 4NT, UK
e-mail: A.Kar@exeter.ac.uk
Anti-infective agents: Spectrum and selectivity
The discovery and development of antiinfective
agents traces its beginnings to
the work on penicillins (A. Fleming, Britain)
and sulfonamides (G. Domagk, Germany),
while earlier discoveries have been in the
area of medicinal plants and herbal
extracts, e.g. tulsi and turmeric (India),
baobab (Africa), Artemesia annua/sweet
wormwood extract (China).
The last four decades have seen intensive
research for discovering new antiinfective
agents with activity against a
broad spectrum of pathogenic bacteria,
also called broad-spectrum anti-bacterial
agents. These meet the medical need of
curing infections caused by several bacterial
pathogens, which differ from each
other in minor and sometimes significant
ways.
These significant though minor differences
are sometimes a hurdle for the development
of effective broad-spectrum
anti-bacterial agents. Also, the similarities
between mammalian mitochondria and
bacteria are sometimes a hurdle for the
development of effective broad-spectrum
anti-bacterial agents. When this is the case,
the drug discovery activities for such
projects usually end, in favour of other
more promising projects. Some patents
may be filed, and a series of papers may
be published in leading scientific journals.
In the case of anti-bacterial agents
with a narrow spectrum of activity against
a small set of pathogenic bacteria, the
boundary conditions for drug discovery
are quite different. Examples are leprosy,
meningitis and tuberculosis. In each case,
only a few species of pathogenic bacteria
are the causative agents, with minor differences
between them.
This has several implications. It is less
difficult to discover potent anti-bacterial
agents with a narrow spectrum of activity.
There is more scope to exploit the
minor differences between the drug-targets
of a small set of pathogenic bacterial
species and their orthologs/homologs in
mammals. Also, anti-bacterial compounds
that did not make it as broad-spectrum
anti-bacterial agents, may be developed
into narrow spectrum anti-bacterial agents.
In view of what has been published on
anti-bacterial compounds that did not become
broad-spectrum anti-bacterial agents,
knowledge is available.
In addition to the established approaches
for drug discovery, namely,
structure-aided design, reaction mechanismbased
design, combinatorial chemistry
and high throughput screening, the area
highlighted here will hopefully receive
more support than it has in the past.
JACOB E. JOHN
6A 7th Road,
Nandidurg Extension,
Bangalore 560 046, India
e-mail: jacobejohn@gmail.com
CORRESPONDENCE
CURRENT SCIENCE, 160 VOL. 92, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2007
Fungal biodiversity: Putting our house in order
Microbial bio-diversity has been on the
agenda of most governments since the
Convention on Biological Diversity came
into force in December 1993. No inventory
of microbial species of the world exists
and it is estimated that less than 5% of
the earth’s species are known1. The situation
deepens further due to the declining
number of microbial systematists. Nations
are developing ‘National action plans’.
Some countries where work was already
in progress looking to the future need
and those who have realized the tremendous
potentiality and future of fungi have
taken a lead. But, we are not serious
though we know the potentialities of
fungi. Our only National Herbarium and
Culture collection (HCIO) is old and facing
specialist/manpower crisis, low funds
and poor expansion, not in keeping with
the need of this megabiodiversity country.
We have established IMTECH and
NBAIM but without mycologists/specialists
of various groups who will map/
inventorize fungal diversity, if Hawksworth’s
criterion2 is taken as a yardstick
to fathom fungal diversity in its true
sense. We have several funding agencies
such as ICAR, CSIR, ICFRE, ICMR,
DST, DBT, MoEF but these are creating
new centres, like the two mentioned above,
with good sophisticated instruments but
without specialist staff to run these instruments
and above all without ‘fungal
taxonomists’ who are basically needed
for such centres. We know the excellent
record of performance of CBS, Utrecht
and IMI, Surrey and others who have delivered
their best services globally.
The experts/taxonomists are retiring or
have retired and their posts are either
abolished or replaced by pseudo-biotechnologists
and microbiologists or even by
some non-biologists. We have abolished
basic courses of biology/fundamentals of
biology in the name of upgrading the
courses, with the result, the country has
gradually lost taxonomic expertise/manpower.
The herbaria/culture collection
became deserted. At present we have no
training centre, especially for taxonomy,
as capacity building centre(s). Some agencies
provide funds for refresher courses
but we know the fate of these refresher
courses and the so-called higher training.
There is an urgent need for establishing
‘school of fungal taxonomy’ as ‘capacity
building centre’ with specialists of particular
groups. There is need for strengthening
National Herbarium/Culture
Collection/HCIO, Agarkar Institute,
IMTECH, NBAIM, and other Herbaria
and Culture Collections and Institutes
which have made contributions to various
groups of mycology in India. Secondary
metabolites and mushrooms are a source
of foreign currency and should be sincerely
taken care of. A single metabolite
like penicillin, cyclosporine can give
enough return to the Government. Therefore,
liberal funding is required to harvest
the maximum benefit in minimum
time period. A team of experts should be
given the responsibility of mapping fungal
diversity in collaboration with experts of
various groups worldwide, similar to the
Costa Rican pattern.
In conclusion, to keep our house in order
we have to strengthen the National herbaria/
culture collections, including appointment
of specialist fungal taxonomists of
various groups and liberal funding without
any red tape.
1. Hawksworth, D. L., Minter, D. W., Kinsey,
and Cannon, P. F., In Tropical Mycology
(eds Janardhanan, K. K. et al.), Oxford &
IBH, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 29–50.
2. Hawksworth, D. L. and Colwell, R., Inoculum,
1994, 44, 4–6.
N. D. SHARMA
21, Kundan Residency,
Mandla Road, 4th Mile, Tilhari,
PO Gauriya Ghat via RFRC,
Jabalpur 482 021, India
e-mail: ndsfungi@yahoo.co.in
No comments:
Post a Comment