In a corner of the Himalayas, India now has its first organic state

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In a corner of the Himalayas, India now has its first organic state
by Madhura Karnik

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Sikkim, a northeast Indian state snuggled between Bhutan and Nepal, has now converted its agricultural land into organic land, making it India's first organic state.
The 75,000-hectare area was transformed as per the policies of the Indian government's National Programme for Organic Production programme, meant to promote organic farming. This form of agriculture typically avoids the use of pesticides, fertilisers, genetically modified crops and other artificial inputs.

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 Instead, farmers use natural alternatives such as green manure and compost.
"We achieved fully-organic status by the end of December. Prime minister Narendra Modi will formally announce this at a sustainable agriculture conference in Gangtok on January 18," S. Anbalagan, executive director of the Sikkim Organic Mission (SOM), told the Press Trust for India on Jan 14.
Harmful pesticides
In 2003, Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling passed a resolution in the state legislative assembly, vowing to make the Himalayan state completely organic, and subsequently banned synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. Sikkim has one of the smallest

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agricultural land area in the country and it mainly produces maize, paddy and cardamom. This is what the SOM website says about the ban:
The ban of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides at local level has led to reduction in the use of fossil fuels and emission of green house gases in addition to sequestering native soil and ecology of the state thereby playing an important albeit small role in mitigating the effects of climate change which is very significant in the fragile Himalayan ecosystem.
For long, India has grappled with challenges relating to the safety of pesticides and fertilisers. Much of that was a result of the green revolution, an initiative launched in the late 1960s to increase food production. This led to an increase in the use of modified seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, but also had socio-economic cost due to environmental damages.
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For instance, in May 2011, India’s supreme court passed an interim order banning production and sale of endosulfan, a deadly pesticide, after over 150 people in the southern Indian state of Kerala were affected by diseases such as mental retardation and hydrocephalus, that causes a swelling of the head.
“It is a great initiative that states are now taking the lead on their own to implement such policies and we believe such policies are in the right direction," Amit Khurana, the programme head of New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment’s food safety team, told Quartz.

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"India’s pesticide management program has a lot of gaps," Khurana added. "For instance, we need a system in place that regulates the daily acceptable intake of pesticides. There are also the concerns that close to one-fifth of pesticides used in the country don’t have their minimal residual limit approved by food safety authorities."
On the flipside, as states gradually adopt organic farming, there could also be a drop in yields. According to a research report by

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Jitendra Pandey and Ashima Singh of the Banaras Hindu University, organic farms yield are between 10% and 15% less than traditional farms. However, the report added, the lower yield was balanced by "lower input costs and higher margins."
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Tags: compost, first organic state, gangtok, Government, green manure, Himalayas, india, initiative, legislative assemlu, Narendra Modi, organic farminf, organic farming state, pawan kumar chamling, Press Trust of India, Sikkim, Sikkim Organic Mission, state | http://qz.com/?tag=organic-farming-state
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The Real Style ------- NP2016

The innovative ways that drivers hope to beat some of the strictest traffic laws on Earth

The innovative ways that drivers hope to beat some of the strictest traffic laws on Earth

 by Ana Campoy
Mexico City is rolling out its new traffic rulebook, a 124-page document (pdf, link in Spanish) with the ambitious goal of taming the megalopolis’s unruly drivers.
Starting Dec. 15, residents in the car-centric city are subject to strict new standards that give priority to pedestrians and cyclists, and heavily penalize drivers who break the rules. Traffic fines went up significantly—some are now more than 30 times the daily minimum wage.
In addition to punishing common traffic offenses, the city also is now fining uncivil driving behavior. Laying on the horn costs up to 700 pesos (around $40); yelling obscenities out the window, more than 2,000 pesos.

More than 10,000 cameras and radars (Spanish) have been installed throughout the city to enforce the new rules. But Mexico City’s ever-inventive residents are already finding ways to cheat the system. And this has spawned a market for tools to obscure license plates.
Placa Fantasma (Spanish), or phantom plate, offers night and daytime solutions, which it sells for 700 pesos each under the motto “Live without rush. Live calmly.” The company says a few applications of its spray on a license plate will cause traffic-camera pictures taken with a flash to be overexposed. A transparent plastic cover that’s installed over the plate blurs the numbers for the camera, but not to the human eye, it says.

A company salesperson told Mexican newspaper Milenio there’s been a surge in demand (Spanish) for its products as the city implements the new system. On its website, the firm says deliveries will take more than a week to fulfill due to the high volume of orders.

Other drivers are obscuring their plates with a 349-peso slatted cover, or with special stickers that go over plate’s letters and numbers, rendering them unreadable for cameras; those sell for 300 pesos.
There’s also a remote-controlled plate holder that lowers a black shield, completely blocking the plate numbers from the camera’s view. But at nearly $2,700, that’s a luxury only a few drivers can afford.
The head of the city’s government, Miguel Angel Mancera, has warned those who try to cheat the system that they will be tracked down and punished. That's a tall order, considering the city’s has more than 4.5 million registered cars.

The Real Style ---NP---2016