Farming for the Future

Upon settling in South India, the refugees--many of whom were herders or nomads in Tibet--shifted to an agrarian lifestyle. Blessed with fertility and monsoon rains, the land was well suited for cultivation. The settlement farmers adopted the modern agricultural practices prevalent in the 1960s, focusing on the intensive cultivation of a few cereal crops, most notably maize. However, without diversification or crop rotation, this type of monocropping, combined with the overuse of water resources and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, led to a precipitous decline in soil fertility and crop yields. Meanwhile, the farmers became strained by rising costs of production. After four decades, it became evident that conventional farming practices were neither environmentally nor economically sustainable--but the farmers saw no other path to follow.

In 2002, the Central Tibetan Administration adopted a pivotal policy introducing organic farming methods to the settlements. Drawing inspiration from Gandhi's concept of rural self-sufficiency and the Dalai Lama's vision of Tibetan enclaves as sanctuaries of ahimsa, or non-violence, the policy seeks to transform the settlements into paradigms of sustainable agriculture.

The Dalai Lama has long championed the principle of ahimsa as the ultimate expression of compassion. He teaches that respect for the earth and environmental protection are vital practices of ahimsa, and therefore part of humanity's universal responsibility. "Our ancestors viewed the earth as rich and bountiful," he writes in My Tibet. "Many people in the past also saw nature as inexhaustibly sustainable, which we now know is the case only if we care for it. It is essential to reexamine what we've inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to coming generations." Encouraging environmental stewardship in the settlements, the Dalai Lama endorsed the CTA's organic farming policy.

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.

His family must repay a debt of £400 and the crop this year is poor.

If Japan managed to exploit the chump factor in American foreign policy quite brilliantly, China can be said to have elevated the rope-a-dope technique to an art. Fingleton points out that the belief in Washington (following the mythology of universal democracy) has been, for many years now, that as China prospers it will become more democratic. China lets the U.S. believe whatever it wants, but the truth is just the opposite: China is getting rich because it is authoritarian, because it is opposed to Western values and to the notion of a laissez-faire market economy. The Chinese economic system is rather one of state capitalism run by iron bureaucratic control, and involving a labyrinthine system of trade barriers, an artificially undervalued currency, and widespread institutionalized bribery-a "shark tank," as one China-watcher has called it. Writing in Newsweek magazine (19 January 2009), Rana Foroohar says that this is a place "where the state doctors statistics, manipulates the stock markets, fixes prices in key industries, owns many strategic industries outright, and staffs key bank posts with Communist Party members." While pundits such as Thomas Friedman and Francis Fukuyama continue to believe that Western logic is universal and will eventually sweep the world, and the Wall Street Journal proclaims that the Asian nations are "racing to build an American-style consumer economy," the Chinese use this kind of American self-deception as a cover for their own non-Western agenda. For Chinese society follows a very different set of rules, ones partly derived from Confucius, in which ideology counts for nothing and results count for everything. In this system, the end justifies the means all the time; "truth" is not a matter of great concern. In the Confucian scheme of things, the "truth" is merely contextual-you just say what is appropriate in the circumstances, not what actually is the case. This is what, from a Western point of view, would be called amoral, but the Chinese see it as simply pragmatic. Deng Xiaoping, who was the de facto leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to the early 1990s, captured the attitude succinctly when he remarked, "It doesn't matter if a cat is white or black, as long as it catches the mouse." As for the masses, they are expected to exhibit obedience, loyalty, and self-sacrifice; nothing more. The key concept is "harmony"-true of Japanese society as well.

Paul Krugman: Reconsidering a miracle

In short, how much of the apparent US productivity miracle, a miracle not shared by Europe, was a statistical illusion created by our bloated finance industry?

Behind a set of glass doors in what used to be the Daily Express building in Fleet Street, and along the way in the former Daily Telegraph building, are the main European offices of the most feared, revered and secretive investment bank on the planet. It has been described as a 21st-century cult and as the Rolls-Royce of financial institutions. It is the place where every sharp-dressed, hard-edged graduate longs to work, not least because the best and brightest are promoted so fast that their noses bleed. It is called Goldman Sachs.