There was a time when the harvest season meant a lot of celebration for farmers. Almost always, this time of the year was synonymous with the agrarian community singing songs, and completing harvest-related activities.
In a way, it was aso a method of safeguarding folk culture. Today, machines and technology have replaced most of these practices, saving time, but erasing a way of life.There are some farmers, though, who have managed to retain a bit of the old and a bit of modern ways.
Take Basavanneppa Gowrimani, a farmer from Haveri taluk's Chennur village, who is in his seventies. This time, the harvest has been a good one, and there seems to be no trouble with fodder for cattle in the Haveri region. And yet there seems to be no celebrations. Except in Gowrimani's house.
We meet eighty-year-old Irabasappajja Totagera of Akkur. He talks about forgotten varieties of maize, including white maize, Maldandi, Bijapur maize, etc.
He explains how the entire community would get together to harvest the maize in one farmer's land. Then, there would a naivedya, an offering to the gods, and a small festival would be held to celebrate the harvest.
"Today's times are the exact opposite. All those devotion-filled celebrations have now gone with the wind. Today's granaries are roads that see a lot of bus and lorry traffic. Where there were once folk songs are mobile ring tones.
Where people would manually harvest and thresh crops, today there are machines. Once the grains were stacked in homes and yards, there would be celebrations and decorations again.
Agricultural implements would de decorated and agrarian deities propitiated, explains Basavanneppa Gowrimani. Even the old utensils that were used to measure grains have now been forgotten.
R S Patil
Managing e-waste
It is an unfortunate reality that e-waste is simply dumped along with other wastes. That these should not be mixed with other wastes appears to fall on deaf ears of most individual consumers who have no compunction in throwing used/discarded CDs, DVDs, cassettes, ink-cartridges, tapes, dry cells, et al along with household rubbish.
The fact that e-waste degrades slowly over years and could result in serious soil and water pollution is not appreciated by consumers. Sometime back there was a drive to collect ink-cartridges that could be reused in a proper manner or disposed off scientifically.
The incentive was there for those firms to give such cartridges to authorised agents by way of acknowledgement of their contribution to save the planet from pollution. Whether some manufacturers accept or not, refilling ink-cartridges is going on, in a way reducing junking of cartridges after a single use.
The manufacturers have to accept such a ground reality and should come forward to do so through their authorised agents to refill the ink-cartridges saving costs to the consumers while contributing to the reuse of cartridges scientifically.
In a way, it was aso a method of safeguarding folk culture. Today, machines and technology have replaced most of these practices, saving time, but erasing a way of life.There are some farmers, though, who have managed to retain a bit of the old and a bit of modern ways.
Take Basavanneppa Gowrimani, a farmer from Haveri taluk's Chennur village, who is in his seventies. This time, the harvest has been a good one, and there seems to be no trouble with fodder for cattle in the Haveri region. And yet there seems to be no celebrations. Except in Gowrimani's house.
We meet eighty-year-old Irabasappajja Totagera of Akkur. He talks about forgotten varieties of maize, including white maize, Maldandi, Bijapur maize, etc.
He explains how the entire community would get together to harvest the maize in one farmer's land. Then, there would a naivedya, an offering to the gods, and a small festival would be held to celebrate the harvest.
"Today's times are the exact opposite. All those devotion-filled celebrations have now gone with the wind. Today's granaries are roads that see a lot of bus and lorry traffic. Where there were once folk songs are mobile ring tones.
Where people would manually harvest and thresh crops, today there are machines. Once the grains were stacked in homes and yards, there would be celebrations and decorations again.
Agricultural implements would de decorated and agrarian deities propitiated, explains Basavanneppa Gowrimani. Even the old utensils that were used to measure grains have now been forgotten.
R S Patil
Managing e-waste
It is an unfortunate reality that e-waste is simply dumped along with other wastes. That these should not be mixed with other wastes appears to fall on deaf ears of most individual consumers who have no compunction in throwing used/discarded CDs, DVDs, cassettes, ink-cartridges, tapes, dry cells, et al along with household rubbish.
The fact that e-waste degrades slowly over years and could result in serious soil and water pollution is not appreciated by consumers. Sometime back there was a drive to collect ink-cartridges that could be reused in a proper manner or disposed off scientifically.
The incentive was there for those firms to give such cartridges to authorised agents by way of acknowledgement of their contribution to save the planet from pollution. Whether some manufacturers accept or not, refilling ink-cartridges is going on, in a way reducing junking of cartridges after a single use.
The manufacturers have to accept such a ground reality and should come forward to do so through their authorised agents to refill the ink-cartridges saving costs to the consumers while contributing to the reuse of cartridges scientifically.