Observations of
Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Governor of West Bengal
At the
Inauguration of the National Symposium on
"Soil Science Research : Retrospect and Prospect in the context of
Environmental Quality and Food Security"
Organized by
Kolkata Chapter of Indian Society of Soil Science
Kolkata
7 December, 2007.
Esteemed Minister Shri Narendranath Dey, President Dr. S. K. Gupta, Dr. Goswami, Dr. S. K. Sanyal, Dr. H. S. Maiti, distinguished scientists and invitees to the gathering.
May I, at the outset, pay my tribute to the late Professor Sushil Kumar Mukherjee in whose memory this gathering is taking place. I would also like to say that it is a very great privilege for me to be in these premises and in this hall named after one of the greatest scientists that India has ever produced; I pay my tributes to the memory of Dr. Meghnad Saha.
The organizations which have come together to host the Conference have done remarkable work, as indeed all of you present here have done. For me to speak on a subject on which all of you know much more, and probably everything that can be known, would be presumptuous. What can I, who is a non-scientist and who have never dealt with the ground, never grown a plant, have to say about soil sciences? It would be quite arrogant on my part to do so.
But as someone who has observed the pattern and prospects of agriculture in our State during my travels and during my discussions, I have come to some tentative observations and some views which I would like to share with all of you.
All over the world, and not just in our country, not just in our State, agriculture is increasingly being regarded as something that belongs to an earlier phase in social evolution. I believe that to be a foundational fallacy.
There is a view amongst people in many parts of the world that India and other countries like China, are "trapped" in subsistence agriculture or in what can be called the "old-world" of cultivation, while the modern world is moving in another direction, in which the products from the soil are raw material for products from the factory.
I believe that is only a partial understanding and in many ways a fallacious understanding of the way life on this planet is meant to evolve. I cannot speak of evolutionary processes with any authority either, but this I venture to say that the evolution of human society is yet to be examined fully. We who are not scientific students of evolution, do not have the time to do so. Yet, many people have come to believe that agriculture, as a human activity, is fast becoming outdated. They feel that soils, therefore, are also something that are under change and can be 'changed' or modified to suit the prospects of husbandry as we understand it at that particular point of time.
Governmental policies are known to have been changed in the perspective of time. There was a period when it was considered necessary to convert deserts into green fields. The great canals in Rajasthan came about this way. I do not know how wise it was to make them, because so much of Rajasthan is, by its inherent nature, a desert. What is to be done for humanity's benefit on and with a desert, as a desert, should have been the more natural consideration. There could probably have been wiser ways of proceeding with those desert soils rather than trying to convert them into green acreages. In the Andamans, large numbers of people needed to be brought in. This was not an agricultural project, it was a social project, a rehabilitation project. People from Bihar, for instance, were brought to the Andamans and forest land was sought to be converted into paddy land. But, as you know, the soil in the forests of Andamans is thin. The trees, of course, create their own 'soils' but, in itself, the soil cover under those trees is thin and cannot be used for rice growing. Besides, there is no fresh water there. Yet rice was attempted to be grown in the Andamans. We know of the result. The settlers were not happy and we can say the soil was not happy. So, we should not think that Governmental policies and programmes are, always, Gospel. They are all subject to change in the perspective of time.
In our State, as all of you know better than I do, to the North we have the mountain slopes, the terai and the Dooars. These are 25% of our State's total area and hold 18% of our population. We experience landslides in the mountain slopes of our State due to the action of gravity and seismic activities. Gravity cannot be changed. But there is something which can be done. We can modify human intervention where that intervention accelerates or aggravates the problem of landslides over which we really have no control. This is not only possible but imperative. We must do something about plastics. What plastics are doing to accelerate landslides is something which we should be aware of.
Then, coming to the biggest part of our State the tract, also known as the Rahr. This comprises 52% of the area of the State and holds 49% of the population. This has a large plateau with red lateritic soil which is not easy to cultivate. We have to realize that if nature has made laterites difficult to cultivate, nature has also given us a balance. The Rahr which includes Birbhum, has large plains, where red soil yields well to farming, where agriculture should not be regarded as a "low and indestructible form of life", but something which can be made into a very productive enterprise, which can be made exciting.
Finally, as all of you know there is the Eastern Deltaic plain – 23% of our total area, with 33% of the population. This is where we have our most fertile tract. The underground water table here is a matter for attention. Indiscriminate use of fertilizer there can change the soil's composition. Our Agriculture Minister has said in his remarkable speech, that what is needed is a balance between chemical fertilizer-based agriculture process and bio-farming.
It is a question of reaching a balance and not of a question of replacing one by the other. We cannot, I think, ever give up the use of chemical fertilizer but we can see from experience that even in the use of chemical fertilizer, there can be a balance, an optimum arrangement, where organic and chemical fertilizers can go side by side.
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not want to take much of your time by saying to you any more about what you know much better than I. But I would end on this note with what the great teacher, Sri Thakur Ramakrishna Dev had said, which is pertinent for all times - Taka Mati, Mati Taka. He was perceptive, farsighted.
Let us not regard land as a fixed deposit which can be encashed as capital. I am all for capital, I am all for industry, but let industry and capital not look greedily upon soil as an encashable asset to be put into the profit graphs of private money. Soil, as our Minister said, is the Mother and we cannot afford to neglect it. It does not mean that we can have no activities on soil except agriculture, not at all. But the soil, which is the soil cover of this planet, fresh water and ozone, are the gifts of Creation. As Dr. Goswami's Sanskrit quotation in his beautiful oration suggested, these are too precious in our evolutionary balance, and not meant to be squandered in ephemeral, or ecologically dubious ventures.
Thank you.
http://rajbhavankolkata.gov.in/html/speech104.htm
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