The New Nation - Internet Edition

Science helps the poor overcome food prices

ICRISAT, Hyderabad

The poorest of the poor, especially those in the drylands, are hardest hit by soaring food prices. Even as the urban poor are the most vulnerable, the rural poor also suffer since most of them are net buyers of food. In sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank estimates that more than 100 million people will be pushed back to poverty after seven years of progress. But cutting edge scientific innovations can help the poor overcome this problem.

Fundamental changes are making agriculture more expensive, such as rising fuel costs, a growing middle class that demands more food, and the use of maize (corn) by the bioethanol industry. The cost of production, particularly for fertilizer is going up faster than food prices. Since fertilizer requires large amounts of energy to produce, higher food prices are likely here to stay.

In the drylands, the prices of crops like sorghum, millet and legumes have increased by 20 to 40% in the past year. They continue to increase sharply during this period known as the "hungry season" in sub-Saharan Africa. It is during this time when last year's food stocks in poor countries dwindle to a minimum before the 2008 harvest is reaped. Price trends are now on a parallel pattern that caused famine in Niger in 2005.

Nevertheless, scientific innovations in crop cultivation techniques can help poor farmers cope with soaring food prices, say experts from the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). According to Dr William D Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, "On-farm yields of cereal crops in the drylands can be doubled or tripled with modest inputs, such as low rates of fertilizer combined with highly responsive crop varieties, particularly hybrids, and low-cost rainwater harvesting". ICRISAT is one of 15 global agricultural research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

More specifically, Dr Dar cited the scientific innovations that have been found effective in producing food at lower cost. These include: planting-basin cultivation, fertilizer microdosing, use of improved crop varieties and hybrids, improved seed systems, tree-crop integration, gravity-fed drip irrigation, growing new types of crops, integrated pest management and value-added to sorghum by producing bioethanol as well as grain and feed from sweet sorghum.

Planting-basin cultivation begins by scooping small basins by hand-hoe that concentrate rainwater and plant nutrients at the base of the plant, where roots are most dense. Coupled with this, small doses of fertilizer (less than a tenth of the rates used in developed countries), applied in combination with small amounts of manure in these moist basins and planting improved crop varieties (especially hybrids) can double or triple yields.

Improved crop varieties use fertilizer more efficiently, are more resilient to drought, pests and diseases and incorporate grain quality traits demanded by the market. Likewise, hybrid varieties can turbo-charge yields through their fertilizer responsiveness and robust growth. To make these varieties available to poor farmers at the right time, improved seed systems are required to multiply seeds in the right quantities.

Another new farming system technique is to grow special trees in the same field as crops. The trees collect additional nutrients from the soil, and farmers slice off the branches to allow leaves to drop off onto the soil surface, adding nutrients for the young growing crops. These trees and leaves also protect the soil from erosion by wind and water. While boosting crop yields, the trees also provide higher-value products such as fruits, gums, cosmetics, and renewable energy (in the form of firewood).

Irrigation is a third new technique, but practiced in more efficient ways than in the past. "Drip irrigation" delivers tiny amounts of water drop-by-drop to each plant through a plastic tube, providing just the amount the plant or tree needs for optimal growth. Fertilizer mixed with the drip water also improves its efficiency of usage. ICRISAT has pioneered inexpensive drip irrigation systems suitable for sub-Saharan Africa. It has also identified the matching trees and vegetable crops that deliver high profits when drip-irrigated. Situated near urban areas, these lush 'market gardens' connect poor farmers to increasingly affluent middle class markets, giving them easy access to better technologies and infrastructure.

A fourth technique is "integrated pest management" which cuts the costs and hazards of pesticide sprays on legumes, allowing farmers to obtain higher prices from organic food markets. The demand for better-quality food from cities in the developing world as well as from overseas markets for dryland crops like chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut can become an engine for development, said Dr Dar. That demand "pull" links farmers to processors and sellers who, in turn provide farmers with new technologies that assure the processors of a constant supply of top-quality produce.

Another "pull" factor that can lift rural areas out of poverty, is the new bioethanol market. Rather than export precious cash to overseas oil producers, it can be invested into the poor rural areas to stimulate development. This need not come at the expense of food production or the environment. Sweet sorghum is a 'smart' crop that produces food (grain) and fuel (stalk juice) on the same plant, plus vital livestock feed. After crushing to extract the sugar-rich juice that ferments into bioethanol, the residual stalk material is prized as feed for cattle, goats and sheep.

In the 1990s, the world grew complacent with food security. As food prices declined, it was assumed that investments in agricultural research and development could also be allowed to decline.

"Now we've received a harsh wake-up call. Unless we re-invigorate agriculture and lift it to a new level of productivity and efficiency, the world will face more hunger, more poverty, more despair, and more anger," Dr Dar warned. "We do not have the luxury of an easy excuse. We must not say that "it can't be done", because we know it can be," he added. "Big increases in food production are within our reach, so we must grab this opportunity right now. There is no other choice but to do so, since we will be judged on this choice by the world's poor and hungry."

Science promote adaptation to climate change

S Gopikrishna Warrier

As the world celebrates Environment Day, science is continuously mobilized to help mitigate the threats caused by global warming and climate change.

Along with this, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), headquartered in Patancheru, Hyderabad in southern India, is intensively working with its partners to develop science-based strategies that empower vulnerable communities to cope with climate change in the dry tropics of the world.

These strategies will help farmers to face the challenges of climate change on two fronts:

* Short to medium-term: Helping farmers and their support agents to cope better with current rainfall variability as a prerequisite to adapting to

future climate change.

* Medium to longer-term: Adapting dryland crops (sorghum, millet, groundnut, chickpea and pigeonpea) to grow in a warmer world.

"Climate variability and change is an important consideration for ICRISAT given our mandate for the improvement of rainfed farming systems in the dry tropics of the developing world," says ICRISAT's Director General William D Dar.

Satellite data shows that the dry tropics, where rainfed agriculture provides 60% of the world's food, will be the most vulnerable to climate change. ICRISAT data shows that increases in temperature will have a significant (8% to 30%) reduction in grain yields of dryland crops. Nevertheless, due to their evolutionary advantage, dryland crops are better adapted than other major food crops (rice, maize and wheat) to environmental stresses such as drought.

"ICRISAT believes that the ability of agricultural communities and agricultural stakeholders must first be enhanced to enable them to cope better with current climatic variability if they are to adapt to the predicted future increases in climate variability," added Dr Dar.

Watershed management has also contributed to improving the resilience of agricultural incomes despite the high incidence of drought as evidenced from the drylands of India. This shows that where rural communities have viable livelihoods, adaptation to climate change is feasible.

ICRISAT has identified long-term strategies that will result in crop varieties and cropping systems that are adapted to a changing environment. An Integrated Genetic and Natural Resources Management (IGNRM) approach is pursued which considers factors such as:

* Higher temperature tolerance

* Increased root stresses due to soil salinity, acidity, nutrient availability, drought, flooding

* Changed severity and distribution of pests and diseases

* Migration of dryland crops into geographical areas already marginal for crops currently being grown

Dr Dar confidently affirms, "ICRISAT is well placed to respond to this challenge with goals of developing resilient ecosystems and crops. Along with our partners, we recognize the importance of the issue and firmly believe that our approach will benefit the livelihoods of communities who are the most vulnerable to climate change. World Environment Day is an excellent reminder about our mission in the dry tropics."

ICRISAT is one of 15 global agricultural research Centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It works with a wide array of lead organizations dealing with meteorological services and climate science research worldwide. Research focuses on making better use of natural resources and developing innovations that have a high probability of success.

( The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT))

New car CO2 emissions increasing

CSE, New Delhi

Centre for Science and Environment's analysis of the emissions data available from the Automotive Research Association of India shows heat trapping CO2 emissions from newer cars are increasing over the years.

This is ominous as CO2 emissions are directly linked with fuel economy of vehicles. This point towards increased oil guzzling at a time when the country is reeling under severe economic strains from skyrocketing oil prices.

The study also shows the CO2 emissions from vehicles are increasing in Delhi. Personal vehicles - cars and two-wheelers, contribute maximum.

As this raises concern regarding increased oil consumption, the certified fuel economy data in km/litre of each make and model of cars remain a secret. CSE found this information cannot be obtained even under the all powerful RTI.

CSE calls for urgent multi-pronged strategy to control oil guzzling and CO2 emissions - improve public transport, and implement fuel economy standards.

New Delhi, June 2, 2008: Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has expressed deep shock on learning that when the oil price hike has put Indian economy at risk, heat trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that directly depend on the amount of fuel burnt, are on the rise from newer vintages of cars on Indian roads. This hints at increased oil guzzling.

This has emerged from CSE's analysis of the CO2 emissions tested by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) from vehicles produced in different time period - 1991-96, 1996-2000, post 2000 and post 2005. Further estimates carried out to assess the trend in total CO2 load from vehicles in Delhi exposed significant increase in the total CO2 emissions load from vehicles. This has been incited by unbridled growth in cars and two-wheelers, and increase in travel distances. Energy impact of this trend can be severe.

What the new analysis tells us

The ARAI data shows higher CO2 emissions from newer cars:

Post-2000 petrol cars, with engine size more than 1,400 cc, emits 143 gm/km of CO2. But post -2005 models of same engine size emit 173 gm/km. Fuel economy drops from 16 km/litre to 13 km per litre.

Diesel car models with engine size less than 1,600 cc of 1996-2000 vintage emit 129 gm/km but comparable post-2005 model emits 149 gm/km. Fuel economy drops from 20 km/litre to 18 km/litre.

While SUV models with engine size less than 3,000 cc of 1996-2000 vintage emits 189 gm/km, the post-2000 vintage emits 229 gm/km and post-2005 models emit 256 gm/km. Today one SUV emits equal to two small petrol cars. Estimated fuel economy drops are dramatic - from 14 km/litre in 1996-2000 models to 10 km/litre in post 2005 models.

Further estimates show total CO2 emissions load from vehicles is increasing in cities like Delhi. Cars and two-wheelers contribute maximum to the total CO2 emission load from vehicles in Delhi - as much as 60 per cent. Only in 5 years, between 2002 and 2007, the CO2 emissions load from cars has increased by 73% and from two wheelers by 61%. This has serious implications for energy impacts.

Public transport buses contribute much less of CO2 load - 20%. But it is important to note buses carry several times more people and consume significantly less fuel per passenger. CSE's estimate for Delhi's BRT corridor shows that per capita energy consumption can be 8 times higher in cars than buses.

"Older cars can become more fuel-inefficient and emit more CO2 due to poor maintenance and deterioration. But newer cars, even those produced after 2000 and 2005, showing higher levels of CO2 emissions than the older vintages is unexpected and disturbing", says Anumita Roychowdhury, in charge of CSE's Right to Clean Air Campaign. Are car companies increasing weight, power, and performance of cars at the cost of fuel economy? But this evades legal scrutiny as India has not enforced fuel economy standards for vehicles yet.

At the same time explosive increase in personal vehicle numbers in the absence of adequate public transport system, are fuelling the CO2 emissions in Delhi. This mirrors the national threat of growing carbon and energy imprint of urban transport.

Disturbed by the CO2 trends, CSE made efforts to obtain official fuel economy data for car models that are recorded at the time of certification of new vehicles. "But we were appalled to discover that this crucial information is not available even under the Right to Information Act. At a time when the country is going bankrupt on account of crippling crude oil prices, fuel economy data of cars (in km/litre) is held as trade secret," says Roychowdhury: "But such data are routinely published in other countries to help consumers select fuel efficient vehicles and help governments to set up fuel economy standards."

The ARAI, which certifies vehicles for emissions and tests fuel consumption of vehicles, replied to the RTI request saying, "numerical value of fuel consumption of each model is of commercial confidence in nature and third party information". The Union ministry of shipping, road transport and highways, which regulates testing and certification of vehicles, says "this department does not maintain the results of type approval tests". CSE's efforts have exposed that the government has not implemented even its own recommendations of the Auto Fuel Policy, 2003 that required "mandatory disclosures" of fuel economy data by auto companies.

This is reprehensible when the cost of fuels on account of under recovery by oil companies today amounts to about 3 per cent of the GDP. And the government, along with the public sector oil companies, are absorbing nearly 88 per cent of the cost burden. Oil bonds floated by the government do not recover even one-third of the losses, and threaten to increase off-budget liability and inflation.

The losses per litre of fuel, due to under recovery, are as high as Rs 16.33 for a litre of petrol and Rs 28.12 per litre of diesel. But the beneficiaries of this perverse subsidy are the car makers and users who are reaping the benefits at an enormous welfare cost. It is time that the car industry shoulders the responsibility and adopts mandatory fuel economy standards. The World Energy Outlook, 2007 has estimated that most of the increase in fuel consumption by 2030 in India will be driven by light-duty vehicles, mainly cars - growing at an annual average rate of 10 per cent. India's Energy policy has estimated that with 50 per cent improvement in fuel efficiency can help to save nearly 86 million tonnes of fuel by 2030-31. This roughly indicates saving of 65 per cent of total current consumption and in terms of CO2 emissions the reduction is equal to removing 7 million of today's four-wheelers.

CSE demands fuel economy norms and scaling up of public transport * Develop and enforce mandatory fuel economy standards. Carmakers must declare fuel economy of their vehicles. Once fuel economy standards are in place link tax measures with clean and fuel efficient vehicle technology.

Simultaneously speed up and scale up implementation of public transport systems to reduce car usage. Extensive network of mass transport - metro, BRT and buses - is needed for substantial fuel savings. Given the staggering cost of oil in the economy, these measures will be vital for our future energy security and environment.

About Hamzanama-the great Moghul art

William Dalrymple

Magic and adventure made the Hamzanama the most popular oral epic of the Islamic world. WILLIAM DALRYMPLE tracks its mad energy in its first-ever compilation in English

IN JUNE 2002, as Pentagon strategists were making their plans for the invasion of Iraq, a short distance away down Washington's National Mall, the Freer- Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian were showing one of the most interesting exhibitions of Islamic art seen in the US for years. Ironically, the show was made up of illustrations of a story largely set in the very Iraqi cities which were shortly to find themselves as targets for the Pentagon's munitions.

The Sackler show was unusual in that it displayed just one single painted manuscript , the Hamzanama: a spectacular, illustrated book commissioned by the Emperor Akbar (1542-1605). For art historians, the show was fascinating for it brought together the long-dispersed pages of what was the most ambitious single artistic commission ever undertaken by the atelier of an Islamic court: no fewer than 1,400 huge illustrations were produced.

Before commissioning the Hamzanama, the Mughal miniature painting atelier seems to have contained only two artists, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad, whom Akbar's father, the emperor Humayun, had lured from Persia and who had, between them, produced only a handful of pictures since their arrival in India. Akbar changed that for ever by commissioning no fewer than 1,400 huge illustrations to the Hamzanama , the largest single commission in Mughal history. The project forced the atelier to train more than 100 Indian artists (many of them apparently Hindu painters from Gujarat) in the Persian miniature style, as well as troops of poets, gilders, bookbinders and calligraphers.

The resulting volumes took more than 15 years to produce and in the process, effectively gave birth to an independent Mughal miniature tradition, a wonderful combination of Persian, central Asian and Indian styles, and a revolutionary leap forward from all the artistic currents that preceded it; one in which you can see the two artistic worlds of Hindu India and of Persianate Islamic Central Asia fusing to create something new and distinctively Mughal.

Some of the illustrations are very Persian in style: flat linear forms remarkable for their precise, angular, geometric perfection. Other pages are pure Indian in spirit: there are Indian clothes and Indian gestures; the palette is brighter and more dramatic than is common in Persian art, and there is a love of the natural world that is very specific to the subcontinent. The playful elephants that charge across the canvases seem to have arrived straight off the walls of the Hindu rock sculptures of Mahabalipuram. But already in the canvases of the Hamzanama you see the two worlds beginning to fuse, hear the soft ripping of gossamer as wholly Mughal images emerge fully formed from the chrysalis of Akbar's atelier.

Akbar's hagiographer, Abu'l Faizal, recorded extensive details about individual artists, and was especially proud of the way that the Persian masters of the atelier had trained up ordinary Indians so that 'novices have become masters'. One of these, Daswanta, 'was the son of a palanquin- bearer who was in the service of the court. Urged by natural desire, he used to draw images and designs on the walls. One day the far-reaching glance of His Majesty [Akbar] fell on those things and, in its penetrating manner, discerned the spirit of a master working in them. Consequently, His Majesty entrusted Daswanta to the master of the atelier. In just a short time, he became matchless in his skills.' There was, however, a sad ending to this prodigy: 'Insanity shrouded the brilliance of his mind and he died a suicide.'

Over the centuries, the different volumes of the great Hamzanama manuscript were dispersed and became detached from each other: indeed, most were apparently stolen from the Mughal library in the Delhi Red Fort by the Persian emperor Nadir Shah at the same time as he removed the Koh-i- Noor and the Peacock Throne. From Persia, a large number found their way to Austria, where they are currently in the MAK, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, while others drifted around the Middle East and the subcontinent. The beautiful leaves now in the Victoria and Albert Museum were found 100 years ago, being used to line the window of a junk shop in Kashmir. The Freer exhibition brought the surviving images back together for the first time in 250 years.

Although few recognised this at the time, the Freer Hamza exhibition was of great literary importance too, and started a process that resulted in the translation of the wonderful book under review, The Adventures of Amir Hamza.

The Hamzanama was an illustrated edition of what was once the most popular oral epic of the Indo-Islamic world. The Adventures of Hamza is the Iliad and Odyssey of the mediaeval Persianate world: a rollicking, magic-filled heroic saga, full of myth and imagination. It was originally composed in Iraq around the 9th century, but contained material gathered from the wider culture-compost of the pre- Islamic Middle East. Such was the popularity of the story that it soon spread across the Islamic world absorbing folk tales as it went, and before long, was translated into Arabic, Turkish, Georgian, Malay and even Indonesian.

It was in India, however, that the epic took on a life of its own. Here it grew to an unprecedented size, absorbing endless Indian myths and legends. In this form it began to be regularly performed in public spaces of the great Mughal cities. At fairs and at festivals, on the steps of the Jama Masjid in Delhi, or in the Qissa Khawani, the Storyteller's Street in Peshawar, the professional the story tellers, or dastango, would perform night-long recitations from memory; some of these could go on for seven or eight hours with only a short break. There was also a great tradition of the Mughal elite commissioning private performances of the epic. Ghalib was, for example, celebrated for his dastan parties at which the Hamza epic would be expertly recited.

(William Dalrymple's new book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, (Penguin India) has been awarded the Duff Cooper Prize for History)

The adventures of Amir Hamza

Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami

THE TALES of Hamza collected together a great miscellany of fireside yarns and shaggy dog stories which over time had come to gather around the story of the travels of Hamza, the historical uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. Any factual backbone the story might once have had was, over the centuries, swamped with a flood of subplots and a cast of dragons, giants, djinns, simurgh, sorcerers, princesses and, if not flying carpets, then at least flying urns, the preferred mode of travel for the magicians in Hamza.

Across the Persian-speaking world, from Tabriz to Hyderabad, people would gather around the dastango as he told story after story of the chivalrous Hamza and his beautiful Chinese princess lover; the wise and prophetic Vizier Buzurjmehr and the just Emperor Naushervan. Then there were Hamza's enemies: the ungrateful villain Bakhtak, whose life Hamza has spared, only for Bakhtak to work unceasingly for the hero's demise; and the cruel necromancer and archfiend, Zumurrud Shah. In its fullest form, the tale grew to contain a massive 360 separate stories, which would take several weeks of allnight storytelling to complete; the fullest printed version, the last volume of which was finally published in Lucknow in 1905, filled no less than forty-six volumes, each of which averaged 1000 pages each.

Today, however, the Hamza epic is more or less extinct as a living oral epic: while some children in Persia and Pakistan may still be familiar with episodes, the last of the great dastango, Mir Baqar Ali, died in 1928, a few years before sound revolutionised the nascent Indian film industry that itself had borrowed much of its style and many of its plots from the dastango's story telling tradition.

If the Freer Hamzanama exhibition was the first time a Western audience was exposed to Hamza, it also acted as something of a wake-up call to specialist Urdu and Persian scholars. It was quickly realised that this epic, said to be the longest single romance cycle in the world, had been almost forgotten: barely a handful of scholars had engaged with it, no modern scholarly edition of the epic was in print in any language, and no translation of it into English had ever been made. Yet the epic had had huge influence, not least on Indian drama and cinema as well as on the development of the Urdu and Persian novel, early versions of which were often derived from the Dastans. Hence, the importance of a remarkable new translation of the Hamza epic which has just been published by Random House India. The translation is the work of the Pakistani-Canadian scholar Musharraf Ali Farooqi, who has worked from the Urdu edition published in 1855 by Navab Mirza Ghalib Lakhnavi, and later revised by Abdullah Bilgrami in 1871. Although a fraction of the size of the 46 volume edition , only one complete set of which still exists , the translated version still weighs in at an impressively heavy 944 pages.

MOROEVER, THE epic gives a unique insight into a lost Indo- Islamic courtly world. Although the Hamza epic was originally a Persian production set in the Middle East, the Urdu version shows how far the epic had been reimagined into an Indian context in the course of many years of subcontinental retelling. Though the orginal Mesopotamian place names survive, the world depicted is not that of early Islamic Iraq but that of 18th century late Mughal India, with its obsession with poetic wordplay, its love of Mughal gardens, and its extreme refinement in food and dress and manners. Many of the characters have Hindu names; they make oaths 'as Ram is my witness'; and they ride on elephants with jewelled howdahs. To read The Adventures of Amir Hamza is to come as close as is now possible to the world of the Mughal campfire , those night gatherings of soldiers, sufis, musicians and camp-followers that one sees illustrated in Mughal miniatures: a storyteller beginning his tale in a clearing of a forest as the embers of the blaze glow red and the eager fire-lit faces crowd around.

The Adventures of Amir Hamza has significance beyond mere aesthetic enjoyment. It is good to know that the book has been widely reviewed and read in the US and the UK, two countries with a growing problem of rampant Islamophobia and massive ignorance about the Islamic world. For the narrative opens in Ctesiphon, not far from Baghdad, and encompasses places now in modern Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, most of which the US and its allies regard as little more than breeding grounds for terrorism. At this perilous moment in history, the Hamza epic, with its mixed Hindu and Muslim idiom, its tales of love and seduction, its anti-clericalism , mullahs are a running joke throughout the book , its stories of powerful and resourceful women and its mocking of male misogyny is a reminder of an Islamic world which the West seems to have forgotten: one that is syncretistic, imaginative and heterodox and as far as can be imagined from the puritanical Wahhabi Islam that the Saudis have succeeded in spreading throughout much of the modern Islamic world

(Translation. Musharraf Ali Farooqi Random House)