Amazing progress
Source : Google photo
Synopsis : All countries are making progress in varying degrees to make life better for their citizens but India is in a league of its own when it comes to spectacular advances in technology and infrastructure development .The blog mentions just a few renewable power generation and irrigation projects that has made great impact on the lives of millions of people.
We live in the age of confrontation and continuous threats to our independence posed by people who want to control us and impose on us their ideology, their brand of religion, their culture, their food and their system of the monopolistic exploitation of people to make money.
To achieve this goal, they are prepared to go to war to destroy us and our way of life that is best suited to us. We now see tension between many countries that break out in armed conflicts in the Middle East, North and West of India, in the South China Sea, in the Tigre area of Ethiopia and numerous other parts of the world because people can not resolve their differences amicably.
We see millions of people who become internal refugees in their own countries due to the conflict so they try to leave and seek asylum and protection in other countries that would have them but often they drown in the sea so their dream of a new life never becomes a reality.
Others try to leave due to extreme poverty and jobless situation so they try to reach other countries where they can find employment and means to sustain themselves. Some are forced to flee their country because they are in conflict with the majority of the population due to their hard core religion like in Myanmar so they end up being a burden to the neighboring countries where they fail to assimilate.
In other countries , people are still hell bent on destroying their institutions like the electoral process so that they can keep a dictator in power. So the news channels are full of depressing news everyday because such negative news gets them viewers so rarely they mention when a country makes tremendous progress in agriculture, in their industries and education etc. that dramatically improves the well being of its citizens. News of political assassination, war, refugees, flood and typhoon destruction, famine and global terrorism all are flashed onto our TV screen everyday.
So today I would like to tell you about how India is helping its farmers by bringing irrigation water to their arid land so that they can plant three crops a year and dramatically increase their income by selling their surplus food. You can imagine how millions of farmers who are given this sort of help by the government makes the country not only self sufficient in food but generates huge surplus that it sells abroad to reduce the trade deficit.
I lived in Sudan where the mighty Nile river flows through it and some of its water is channeled to the Gezira plateau to irrigate crops like cotton, sorghum , corn etc. but if you go west of Khartoum, you will soon pass through very arid regions of the country where the farmers only depend on the rain to grow a poor crop now and then. They have been talking of a canal going west to El Obeid to bring the Nile water there for the farmers but it has remained only a dream. There are many reasons. One is the shortage of funds and second is the political will of the government that has other priorities.
If you visit the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri which is some 40 kms from Agra, you will be told that the city built by Emperor Akbar in the 15th century at a great cost was abandoned because their source of water dried up. Akbar could not bring the Yamuna river water to Sikri through a canal although it is hard for me to understand why. The distance was only 40 kms and there was no shortage of hydraulic engineers in those days. He could have given jobs to thousands of people to dig the canal and save his city but he didn’t.
The Romans were master builders and brought water to Rome and other cities from great distance using aqueducts and viaducts that still stand today. You will see the wonderful remains of such structures in Spain and in other parts of their empire and see how well these structures were built using the technology they had in those days.
Then we come to more recent times and see how the Israelis brought a system of drip irrigation to the dry and barren land in their country that turned the land into lush fields of crops, fruit orchards etc. that are so productive. The flooding of fields to irrigate the crops is a wasteful way of using water in many countries but Israel does not have a lot of water so they invented an ingenious system of irrigating their crops using the drip method to give water to plants at the roots after mixing some fertilizer to it. This method cuts down the water evaporation from the surface and the plants suck up every drop of water to grow fast and produce enormous yields.
So I will mention a few such projects in India that have been completed and the farmers are getting the benefits for the first time. Such projects are very big in their scale and scope so they cost a lot of money but any country that invests in the infrastructure projects to benefit its farmers grows fast. The government of India has developed numerous ways to help the farmers like building farm to market roads, electricity in every village, farm loan and subsidies, better choice of markets where they can sell their produce, farm insurance policy, better minimum price for the crops, direct sale to buyers to cut out the middle men , better crop varieties and better technologies .
Note : If the video does not load, just use the link to see the videos
1. The massive drip irrigation project : The biggest such project in the world.
Source : U tube video in English
It is the world’s biggest drip irrigation project called Ramthal that took many years to complete and brings water to the Bagalcot district in Karnataka state to irrigate 24000 hectares ( one sq. km = 100 ha. ) or over 240 sq kms area that is huge. It is a very sophisticated system based on the Israeli model but on a scale that boggles the mind. The video is with English subtitles so you will understand the technicality of it easily.
2. Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project,the biggest in the world:
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