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Vast tracts of Indian farmland is becoming desert due to overexploitation. The cause is, the soil is losing its organic content and the soil is turning into sand. When you farm, the crops feed on the organic content and produce the food the humans consume. Ideally, the human excreta and food waste should go back to the soil and hence close the loop and preserve the fertility of the soil which again produces food for human consumption. But, when farming is done for commercial purpose, there is a net loss of organic content of the soil since the farm produce is carted away to far off places.
The government and the scientists thought that by applying chemical fertilizers that somehow the farm productivity can be kept up. Nothing can be farther from the truth as we face declining farm productivity with decline in the organic content of the soil and pollution of water resources due to the chemical fertilizers. In cities and towns, the sewage pollutes the water resources and the streets when municipal workers unblock and throw the sewage residues on the streets.
In developed countries they return the organic content to the farming soil by filtering the sewage in towns and cities, compressing it to remove the water, then drying the sewage residues, and selling it back to the farmers to fertilize their fields. The waste water loses all the polluting organic matter and it is returned back to the rivers and lakes.
The whole process was privatized in the UK in the 1980s. The same can be done in India also. Some decades back Tamilnadu government brought the MNC firm Onyx from Singapore to undertake conservancy work in Chennai. Then, there was a photo of a French executive from the firm teaching a young woman from Chennai how to sweep the street in Chennai in ‘The Hindu’! Similarly, some foreign company may have to come to India to teach our farmers how to farm! If the governments keep on hanging onto the management of sewage in our towns and cities, our water and street pollution will only worsen and the farmers can not close the food loop. More land will become desert.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.