I Love You, I'm Sorry, Please Forgive Me: Ho'oponopono

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Indian PM dedicates All India Institute of Ayurveda

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today dedicated the All India Institute of Ayurveda, in New Delhi, to the nation.

Speaking on this occasion, the Prime Minister congratulated the gathering on the celebration of Dhanvantari Jayanti as Ayurveda Divas. He complimented the Ministry of AYUSH for the establishment of the All India Institute of Ayurveda.

The Prime Minister said that Ayurveda is not just a medical practice, but encompasses public health and environment health as well. That is why the Government has laid stress on integrating Ayurveda, Yoga and other AYUSH systems into the public healthcare system.

The Prime Minister said that the Government is working towards establishing an Ayurveda hospital in every district of the country. He said that more than 65 AYUSH hospitals have been developed in the last three years.

The Prime Minister said that herbal and medicinal plants can be a significant source of income, globally, and India should leverage its capabilities in this regard. He said the Union Government has approved 100 percent FDI in healthcare systems.

The Prime Minister said that the Government is focused on providing affordable healthcare for the poor. He said the stress has been on preventive health care and improving affordability and access to treatment. He said Swachhata – or cleanliness – is a simple mechanism of preventive healthcare. He said the Union Government has got 5 crore toilets built in three years.

The Prime Minister said that new AIIMS are being established to help the people get better access to healthcare. He mentioned measures such as capping prices of stents and knee implants; and the establishment of Jan Aushadhi Kendras for providing medicines at affordable prices.

Read more about the Ayurvedic movement worldwide.

Indian farmers protecting heirloom rice strains.

Excerpted from the Guardian

India was once home to 100,000 rice varieties, but high-yield, less hardy hybrids have taken over encouraging farmers to safeguard more resistant strains.

India is rice country: the cereal provides daily sustenance for more than 60% of the population. Half a century ago, it was home to more than 100,000 rice varieties, encompassing a stunning diversity in taste, nutrition, pest-resistance and, crucially in this age of climate change and natural disasters, adaptability to a range of conditions.


Today, much of this biodiversity is irretrievably lost, forced out by the quest for high-yield hybrids and varieties encouraged by government agencies. Such “superior” varieties now cover more than 80% of India’s rice acreage.

The Koraput region in the state of Odisha in India’s east was historically among the world’s leading areas of rice diversification. In the 1950s, an official survey found farmers here growing more than 1,700 different rice varieties. Now, more than 1,400 farmers in the region are at the heart of a movement to safeguard what remains of this genetic wealth.


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The effort is anchored by a small conservation team led by ecologist Dr Debal Deb. Almost 200 of the 1,200 varieties in Deb’s collection have been sourced from Koraput’s farmers, indicating that villagers have not abandoned their native seeds for modern varieties. Anxious that his collection not end up as the last repository of endangered local varieties, Deb asked some farmers to grow them and circulate their seeds to help safeguard them from extinction.

 Some of the heirloom varieties of rice on offer. Many of the strains have useful qualities, such as being more resistant to drought or flooding.

Some of the heirloom varieties of rice on offer.

Many of the strains have useful qualities, such as being more resistant to drought or flooding.

 Several farmers outlined economic reasons for not abandoning indigenous heirloom varieties, which they refer to as “desi dhaan”, as opposed to modern hybrids, “sarkari dhaan”, quite literally, “government rice”.

“With hybrids, we have to keep spending money on buying them,” one farmer said. “With desi, we store our seeds carefully and use them the following season.”


Other farmers wanted to get off the pesticide treadmill to reduce costs and stem the visible ill-effects of chemicals on soil quality and biodiversity. “Hybrids demand ever-increasing pesticide applications and our costs go up in an unsustainable way,” said farmer Duryodhan Gheuria.

Gheuria cultivated four desi varieties – Kolamali, Sonaseri, Tikkichuri, Kosikamon – “just like generations of my family”. After encountering Deb’s team, Gheuria began growing three more endangered heirlooms: Samudrabaali, Raji and Governmentchuri.

Heirloom varieties, adapted over centuries to local ecologies, also proved hardier in the face of problems such as pests and drought, the farmers said. In contrast, modern varieties bred in faraway labs were designed for the neat routines of intensive agriculture. They were tailored for mechanised farming, intended to absorb large doses of chemical fertilisers and predictable supplies of water. But farmers reported that such varieties were unsuited for the variable conditions they cultivated in, from undulating land to increasingly unpredictable weather.


Suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers linked to climate change, study claims

The nephew and uncle farming team Laxminath and Sadan Gouda said that on flood-prone land along a riverbank like theirs, modern varieties fared poorly. “They barely grow, pests attack them … we face a world of trouble. But desi dhaan grow well, which is why we will never abandon them.”

Many farmers reported that some heirloom varieties were able to withstand cyclones better than the modern ones, while others could cope better in conditions of drought or low rainfall.

Farmers had other reasons to prefer desi varieties. Their taller paddy stalks yielded valuable byproducts: fodder for cattle, mulch for the soil, and hay for thatching the roofs of their homes, unlike the short-statured modern varieties.

And then there is the universal motivation of taste. Scented varieties like Kolaajeera and Kolakrushna has a sweet aroma, making cooking and eatingthe rice a pleasurable experience.

“With sarkaari rice, even if you have three vegetables accompanying it, it does not taste that good,” laughed farmer Gomati Raut. “Our desi rice, you can eat it by itself.”

 Gomati Raut
Gomati Raut, a farmer who grows ‘desi dhaan’, heirloom rice. Photograph: Chitrangada Choudhury
Deb has said that having a huge number of rice varieties is not an end in itself. “Rice conservation is a handle to ask ourselves, how do we build sustainability in our societies?” he said.

It is a question India must increasingly confront, with increasingly depleted water tables, infertile soils, greenhouse emissions and debt that pushes farmers to suicide.

Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers in Koraput embody an alternative model of agricultural development. Drawing on centuries of knowledge and skills, these farmers sustain 200 rice varieties. In the process, they are reducing their dependence on external agencies, from the seed company and the pesticide seller to the government subsidy and bank loan.

By reviving seeds, they are also reviving food, taste, ritual, nutrition, and sustainability – attributes often forgotten as a result of the obsession with yield. Attributes that make rice more than just a bundle of calories and starch.

Peru legalizes legal marijuana.

Excerpt from the Guardian
Lawmakers in Peru have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to legalize medical marijuana, allowing cannabis oil to be locally produced, imported and sold.

With a vote of 68-5, Peru’s Congress approved the bill which will be written into law in 60 days, once regulations for producing and selling cannabis have been set out.

Alberto de Belaunde, a governing party lawmaker and advocate of the proposal, said: “We’ve ensured that thousands of patients and their family members will enjoy a better quality of life.”

“This is a historic moment and my dream is that empathy and evidence can continue to defeat fears and prejudices,” he told the Guardian.

“This was not an abstract debate, it had a human face,” he added.

The legislative approval followed a government proposal to decriminalize the medical use of marijuana for the “treatment of serious and terminal illnesses” after a police raid in February on a makeshift laboratory where a group of mothers made marijuana oil for their sick children.


After Colombia, Peru is the largest producer of coca, the leaf used to make cocaine, and it has a thriving illegal drug trade. It is now the sixth country or territory in Latin America to legalize the use of cannabis in some form.

The medicinal use of cannabis oil is now legal in Peru’s neighbours Colombia and Chile as well as in Puerto Rico. In Uruguay, marijuana cultivation and use is permitted in all its forms.

Solar Power helping to restore Puerto Rico electricity

The island is focused on restoring power as quickly as possible, but it can’t ignore the chance to rethink its entire energy grid.

By

Naureen S Malik and Brian Eckhouse

October 16, 2017, 2:38 PM EDT October 16, 2017, 3:53 PM EDT

It began with a question posed by Richard Birt, a Las Vegas Fire & Rescue captain: What do you need?

The answer for the San Juan fire house was simple enough: electricity. It’s what much of Puerto Rico has needed since Hurricane Maria tore through the commonwealth more than three weeks ago, laying waste to an already weak grid. Without power, basic logistics such as coordinating and transporting equipment had proven insurmountable.

At the station in Barrio Obrero—Spanish for “workers’ neighborhood”—the situation was dire. A single diesel generator failed at times thanks to contaminated fuel. Firefighters were mostly working in darkness, relying on word-of-mouth to serve the mounting needs of a low-income community. “There are more incidents because people are using hibachis, generators and candles,” said Francisco Cruz, a lieutenant with the San Juan fire department. Nearby, a large tree covered in electrical wires blocked a main road to the station, which helps serve the city’s airport.

Sunrun brought over smaller solar panels with batteries to power water desalination tanks, left. Firefighters and Sunrun employees install panels on the roof of the Barrio Obrero fire station in San Juan to set up a microgrid to keep the lights and communications equipment running. 

Photographer: Naureen S. Malik/Bloomberg

Birt suggested a micro-grid featuring solar and battery storage and began mobilizing a team to help put it all together. Funding for the project was provided by Empowered by Light (a group backed by Leonardo DiCaprio), rooftop company Sunrun Inc. (which also donated the solar panels), and GivePower, a nonprofit that specializes in solar installation in conflict regions.

The solar industry has taken particular interest in San Juan in the aftermath of the hurricane. It’s primarily a humanitarian effort for these companies, but it’s also a chance to showcase an energy source capable of enduring natural disasters. Tesla Inc. is sending its Powerwall battery systems and Sunrun has sent more than 12,000 pounds of solar products and equipment to the island. The Solar Energy Industries Association has received pledges for more than $1.2 million in product and monetary contributions from its network. 

A week and a half after Birt’s initial outreach, a plane arrived in San Juan carrying enough solar panels and batteries to install 18.4 kilowatts worth of systems. The installations in Barrio Obrero were completed two days later, about 13 hours after President Donald Trump, who has noted the commonwealth’s long-standing financial and electrical woes, tweeted: “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”

Some hope the crisis will spur greater energy self-reliance. “We should be more flexible, to allow regions to have their own systems,” said Marco Antonio Rigau, president of San Juan’s city council, in an interview. “We are not using solar energy completely.”

“We put solar on the roof because the sun comes up every day,” Birt said, who himself has lived off the grid using solar and bateries for more than a dozen years. “It’s not going to run out of diesel like a generator or have a problem. The sun comes up, it charges the battery and the batteries are full every day waiting for the power to go down.”

An Outback Power inverter, left, and battery storage, right, installed at fire station unit 60 in Barrio Obrero in San Juan to store solar power. 

Photographer: Naureen S. Malik/Bloomberg

Sunrun is using these charitable installations, that will allow the firehouses to produce their own power for lights and communications equipment, as a test for setting up more microgrids around the island, said Chris Rauscher, director of public policy for the company. 

Providing storage is crucial at this point; solar panels alone can’t provide round-the-clock power. With the grid down, existing panels atop Puerto Rico homes and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stores that are affiliated with utility Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, have failed to operate. 

Houston-based Sunnova Energy Corp., which has 10,000 residential customers in Puerto Rico who depend on Prepa, is asking battery providers to send shipments to the island on the expectation that restrictions preventing their use will be eliminated. Chief Executive Officer John Berger said he met last week with Governor Ricardo Rossello for assistance “to cut the red tape to allow those batteries to come in and allow our customers to have power.”

But for now, logistics remain a problem. Because of limited cargo space, some goods are being sent to a Miami warehouse. “We are going to continue to solicit donations and try to arrange transportation,” said SEIA spokesman Dan Whitten in an email.

Getting the power back on is the current priority, Governor Ricardo Rosello told a Bloomberg News reporter in San Juan on Friday, but more thought must be given to the future of the energy grid. (He has already held an “initial conversation” with Elon Musk on the subject, he recently tweeted.) The island must “give ourselves an opportunity to not just rebuild the old system but rather to establish a platform so that we can consider microgrids” and other uses of renewable sources, he said. 

The Dark History behind the Man Booker Prize

Excerpt From NY Times
By Natalie Hopkinson

Dr. Natalie Hopkinson

Natalie Hopkinson is the author of the forthcoming “A Mouth Is Always Muzzled: Six Dissidents, Five Continents and the Art of Resistance,” from which this essay is adapted

The Man Booker Prize, one of the shiniest baubles and most generous purses in English letters, was awarded today to the American writer George Saunders for his novel “Lincoln in the Bardo.” The occasion invites us to reflect on how the residue of slavery and white supremacy permeates our cultural life and determines whose histories are celebrated and whose are erased.

Slave Ship

There is a dark side to the Booker brand. It has unpaid debts to humanity. It has unleashed continuing agony in places like Guyana, where the Booker brothers founded a sugar firm in 1834. Earlier this year, we lost at age 90 the great novelist and art critic John Berger who tried to bring attention to the problematic nature of Booker’s history in Guyana. In a fiery 1972 acceptance speech for the Booker prize for his novel “G,” Mr. Berger blasted the London-based Booker McConnell sugar firm’s exploitation of Guyana and African slavery’s role in funding the Industrial Revolution. He pledged to donate half the 5,000 pound prize money to the Black Panther Party. (The other half would fund a project on migrant workers.)

Bookers Universal Store- Georgetown - 1950s

During my own research for a coming book about art and resistance in my parents’ native Guyana, I came across a collection of documents held by Britain’s National Archives that demonstrated the kind of casual racial opportunism that should also be associated with Booker. In 1815, soon after the British successfully elbowed away Dutch, French and Spanish rivals to claim the small patch of rainforest land at the northern edge of South America, 22-year-old Josias Booker left Britain to help manage a cotton plantation in what was then British Guiana.

Soon, he invited his brothers, George, William and Richard, to join him in the hottest new start-up industry: sugar. In addition to growing cane harvested by enslaved African workers, the brothers established their own ship fleet and incorporated as Booker Brothers & Co. in 1834.
Read full essay- Click here 


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2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development

Tourism, a key sector in the world

Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued expansion and diversification, and it has become one of the fastest growing and most important economic sectors in the world, benefiting destinations and communities worldwide.

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International tourist arrivals worldwide have grown from 25 million in 1950 to nearly 1.2 billion in 2015. Similarly, international tourism revenues earned by destinations around the world have grown from 2 billion US dollars in 1950 to 1260 trillion in 2015. The sector represents an estimated 10% of the world’s GDP and 1 in 10 jobs globally.

It is estimated that tourism will continue to grow at an average of 3.3% annually until 2030. This growth over the second half of the 20th century and the 21st is due to the fact that access to tourism has progressively expanded thanks to the recognition of the right to holidays in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the improved adoption of labour rights in many countries and the growing middle class worldwide. Furthermore, in recent decades the emergence of new technologies applied to tourism and the decline in the price of transport, especially air transport, have led to an increase in international travel.

Noteworthy is the resilience shown by the sector in recent years, which despite challenges such as the global economic crisis, natural disasters, and pandemics, has experienced almost uninterrupted growth.

Like any activity, tourism has powerful effects on the economy, society and environment in generating countries and especially in the receiving countries. In addition to the socioeconomic impact of tourism, the sector, if managed sustainably, can be a factor for environmental preservation, cultural appreciation, and understanding among peoples.

"Sustainable Tourism – a Tool for Development"

In 2017, the celebration of this World Day focuses on how sustainable tourism can contribute to the development and it is held in Doha (Qatar).

Sustainable tourism is defined as tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities. It should thus make optimal use of environmental resources, respect host communities and ensure viable, long-term economic operations so that benefits are equitably distributed among all stakeholders.

It is a positive instrument towards the eradication of poverty, the protection of the environment and the improvement of the quality of life, especially in developing countries. Well-designed and well-managed tourism can make a significant contribution to the three dimensions of sustainable development —economic, social and environmental—, has close linkages to other sectors and can create decent jobs and generate trade opportunities.

It is therefore essential for all actors, including companies operating in the sector, to be aware of opportunities and responsibilities alike, and to act accordingly so that their actions leave a positive mark on the society in which they operate and ensure the sustainability of the destination and their businesses.

International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development

Recognizing the importance of international tourism in fostering better understanding among peoples everywhere, in leading to a greater awareness of the rich heritage of various civilizations and in bringing about a better appreciation of the inherent values of different cultures, thereby contributing to the strengthening of peace in the world, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 2017 the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development.

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This year provides a unique opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to sustainability and move forward to ensure the positive impact of well-managed tourism on inclusive and equitable growth, sustainable development and peace.