Blog
Short term Project: Testing and Comparing the Nutritional properties of Traditional varieties of Rice grown in diverse Agro-Ecological zonesDuration: 3 monthsProject Promoters: Samanvaya, Nammalvar Multiversity, Tamil Nadu Iyarkai Vivasayigal Koottamaippu (TNIVK) Background: Traditional rice varieties, also termed as land races are sources of diverse nutritional properties. Two factors have enhanced their need in recent times, viz., the immunity enhancement demand since the pandemic and need to cultivate climate change resilience among the food crops. On both counts there are…
My childhood was by the southern Indian coast, living in Chennai. We ran and walked the beach in the morning, played cricket in the beach in the evening. The sea that stretches forever was and continues to be part of life. So do the fishing community whom i have see from close as a kid. I learnt to row in the backwaters early on, though, I never did swim in the sea.
Holidays were spent watching the sea, any visitor invariably was taken to the sea. Have slept in the sands for nights after searching for Olive Ridley eggs through the night with the fantastic SSTCN group and cleaned and planted…
Baingan Swaraj, the book i wrote 14 yrs back has been taken up by a class of students (age 8 - 12) for reading and after completing they wanted to meet the author... It was an amazing interaction to sit and listen to them today and share some thoughts and answer many questions. What started off as a half hour interaction ended up with two hours and another 3 hours with the faculty later on.
Unlike adults who often are waiting to talk about themselves in an interaction, children are still curious, they listen, ask equations, think, ideate, and are playful and creative in their expressions…
The title of the talk the organizers had sent me was - "Exploring opportunities beyond restrictions".
Why did you choose this title?, I enquired with the young lady who was coordinating the two day youth programme for which I was invited to talk on this subject.
Most of these youth are first generation rural under graduates or post-graduates from their families. They are stuck within a small experienced world, they are not looking for opportunities beyond their limited exposure. We want them to think and be able to travel somewhere else to pursue better career. Pondichery is…
Seasons Greetings.
Keeping with our custom of sending a year end report on all the happenings of year, I am enclosing the year end report for 2023. It has been an enriching and insightful year overall and we completed 25 yrs of Samanvaya on Aug 15th.
Our biggest initiative this year has been the Green Economy India portal (www.greeneconomyindia.in), through which we hope to reach out to constituency of people hitherto not reached. The trial results have been encouraging and we seem to be able to expand the horizon of engagement.
Initiatives have…
TAMIL THINAI AS INDIGENOUS BIOREGIONAL FRAMEWORK
“Bioregion has no Scientific validity!” used to be a regular line of argument by the late Scientist Eric Ramanujam. Eric like most scientists refused to acknowledge or accept any ‘’non-scientific’’ definition of land or region. More than Eric it was a question regarding the relationship between a Bioregion and Watersheds by a visiting Australian hydrologist that made me think of bioregion as a framework that can be shaped by the Thinai concept of the Tamil land mass definition.
Thinai is an old Tamil word, as old as the oldest…